William "Willie" Brown walked out on my great-grandma, Victoria Marie Brown, and her mom, Christine Bynog Basco (she had never been married before, she just went interchangeably by her parents surnames) , when she was only 2 years old. They were never married even though Christine took his last name. I've never known much about him even though he was my own grandfather's grandfather. All I know about him are old family stories and what I've surmised myself from a lot of research. The things I do know from what I've heard are he was from Orange, Texas, was a hobo, possibly Irish, had a daughter from a previous relationship named Ella, nicknamed my great grandma "Jessie", had red hair and freckles. And from my own research I've found on a census of him living with my great-grandma when she was 2 and her mom, that he was born around 1880, and worked on the railroad as a tie-maker. I've tried everything imaginable to track him down - I've looked at my great grandma's death certificate but only his name was listed (William Brown), perused railroad employee records, Googled William Browns from Texas, looked at online family trees, and newspaper articles. And still I've come up with nothing. It's always meant a lot to me to find out who he was since he was such a close relative but I've come up with nothing. I had hoped that by doing a DNA test, I'd possibly find a connection to a descendant of his other daughter or possibly even descendants of any siblings he may have had but nothing's came up. So if anyone knows a thing or has ever heard of this man, please please let me know! I'd love some help with this if anyone knows of him.
