 1853 - 1910 (57 years)
-
| Name |
Cordelia Adelaide "Dell" "Ada" "Delia" Brown |
| Birth |
ABT. 1853 |
| Gender |
Female |
| Death |
1910 |
CA; burial: Oak Mound Cem., Healdsburg, Sonoma Co., CA  |
| Person ID |
I5341 |
forneyclark |
| Last Modified |
10 Jun 2026 |
| Father |
Richard Brown, Jr., b. 4 Aug 1822, White Co., TN d. 30 Aug 1900, Healdsburg, CA; burial: Oak Mound Cem., Healdsburg, Sonoma Co., CA (Age 78 years) |
| Mother |
Lemina Alderman, b. Mar 1823, VA d. 1909, Healdsburg, CA; burial: Oak Mound Cem., Healdsburg, Sonoma Co., CA (Age 85 years) |
| Marriage |
14 Nov 1842 |
Polk Co., MO |
| Family ID |
F1850 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
-
| Notes |
- ********
Source:
Lynn Ludlow:
Name, dates, & places
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Source:
Lynn Ludlow:
Name, dates, & places
"Richard Brown d. Aug. 30, 1900. Lived in Polk and Holt counties, MO, and in
1854 co-founded Brownville in Nebraska Territory. Slave owner. Wanted new
settlers in Nebraska to vote for slavery when voting eventually for
statehood. Left Brownville in 1864, probably discouraged about the prospects
for slavery in a state that sent several regiments to be slaughtered for the
Union cause, and landed with in-laws in Collin County, Texas (Plano). This
is according to a Nebraska history written in the 1880s (Wm. Cutler. "Nemaha
County," History of Nebraska, 1882. CHICAGO: THE WESTERN HISTORICAL COMPANY,
Co., A. T. ANDREAS, Proprietor.) The same book, citing ex-Gov. Furnas, says
that Brown, although an ardent advocate of slavery, was run out of Texas
because the locals associated his name and origin (Brownville is not too far
from Ottawatomie, Kansas) with the abolitionist John Brown. He moved to
Kansas City, then to a ranch outside Ferndale, in Humboldt County, CA. In
1898 he and Lemina moved again, this time to Healdsburg to be with a
daughter. In Healdsburg CA. Kicked by a horse, died in the evening. Born
in White County, Tenn., Aug. 4, 1822. M. Lemina 14 Nov. 1842 in Polk
County, MO. Lemina died in 1909 in California. Both are buried in the Oak
Mound Cemetery in Healdsburg, CA, with their notorious daughter, Cordelia
Botkin."
********
Source:
Lynn Ludlow who cited as some of his sources in our correspondence as Joy Gough, Richard Bruechert, and Rex Brown:
"Here's background on Cordelia [Brown Bodkin]:
She died in San Quentin Prison in March 1910. She was 56. The death certificate lists Healdsburg [CA] as the place of "burial or removal." I found her gravesite but not her headstone, it having been buried under duff and ground cover. A fitting end to the story of a woman who craved attention. Cordelia Botkin, separated from her well-to-do husband in Stockton, was a sexy 42-year-old grass widow in San Francisco in 1898. Known to the press as Cordelia, she used at least three other first names -- Dell, Delia, Ada -- and changed her surnames sometimes to Browne and Bothkine. She sometimes posed as "Mrs. Curtis," an English woman with social standing, although she didn't get any closer to Blighty than Joplin, Mo. She rejected the morality codes usually identified with the Victorian era and sought "the pleasures of life" after separating from her husband in Stockton.
For more than two years in wicked San Francisco she delighted in her affair with a much younger man, crackerjack journalist John P. Dunning. He had been manager of the Associated Press bureau for the western United States until he was fired for embezzling $4,000 in office funds to pay his bookies at the Ingleside Race Track. Earlier, his womanizing impelled his strait-laced wife to return with their little daughter to her family home in Dover, Del. A very heavy drinker, he was fired for inebriation at new jobs at a newspaper in Salt Lake City and at the Examiner in San Francisco. He became increasingly dependent on Cordelia. However, when the Spanish-American War was looming, the AP remembered his phenomenal gifts as a correspondent (Samoa in 1889, Chile in 1891). In a wire, the agency said all is forgiven and please go to Havana. Cordelia wept. She pleaded. But he waved goodbye and, to make things worse for her, reconciled with his estranged wife.
Religious, pretty and sweet, former teacher Mary Elizabeth (Penington) Dunning lived with her 5-year-old daughter, her married sister's family and her elderly parents in a big house on The Green in Dover. Cordelia brooded for three months. Then, having been told that Dunning's wife had what a family friend called "an extravagant fondness for sweets," Cordelia mailed her a box of chocolate bon-bons with a note: "With love to yourself and baby." (signed) "Mrs. C."
After supper on a warm August evening on the veranda, Mrs. Dunning opened the package. Assuming the thoughtful gift came from a family friend (Laura Corbaley), she shared the candies with her sister, her mother, her nephew, her niece and two teachers who were strolling by the front porch.
She had the notion that the creams in bon-bons weren't good for little ones, so her daughter Elizabeth was restricted to the nonpareils (solid chocolate drops with sprinkles). Her father was chewing tobacco and took a pass. Her mother didn't like the texture of her bon-bon, so she spit it on the lawn. It was gobbled by her granddaughter's pet rabbit. The rabbit was found dead the next morning. The bon-bons were loaded with arsenic granules. After three days of terrible agony misdiagnosed at first as "cholera morbus" (gastroenteritis), the poison killed Mary Elizabeth and her sister, Ida Deane. Four others survived. The nonpareils meant the little girl's life was spared.
Cordelia was soon arrested. She stood trial in San Francisco in 1898 and a retrial in 1904. Convicted on circumstantial evidence but protesting her innocence, she was imprisoned until her death 12 years later from "softening of the brain."
********
Source:
http://www.russpickett.com/history/botkin.htm
Russ Pickett:
"A CROSS- COUNTRY MURDER"
THE MURDER OF DELAWARE'S CONGRESSMAN PENINGTON'S DAUGHTERS
John Brown Penington was born on December 20, 1825 near New Castle, Delaware. He went on to be a successful Teacher, Lawyer and was elected to two terms as Delaware's U.S. Congressman. However the story of his life was destined to center around the murder of his two daughters by a little know woman named Cordelia Botkin of San Francisco, California.
Congressman Penington and his wife Rebecca had four children, 2 sons and 2 daughters. Their youngest daughter, Mary "Elizabeth", had met and eventually married John P. Dunning who was a reporter for the Associated Press out of San Francisco. They moved to San Francisco and started their lives together. They soon had a baby, a daughter they named Mary after her mother.
It was shortly after the birth of their daughter that 30 year old John Dunning met and started to have an indiscreet relationship with 41 year old Cordelia Botkin.
It is unknown whether or not John's wife Elizabeth knew about this relationship however at about this same time Dunning also began betting heavily at the racetrack. He soon lost his position as day manager of the Associated Press San Francisco Bureau, amid whispers of embezzled office funds. Elizabeth Dunning hightailed it back to the security of her family home in Dover, Delaware and her errant husband, pockets empty, joined his new love.
As it always is in the life of a reporter with the Associated Press John was soon sent on an assignment to cover the war in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
But while he was overseas, trouble erupted in Dover, Delaware. Elizabeth received a series of anonymous letters telling of her husband's involvement with an "interesting and pretty woman" in San Francisco. They were followed by a box of chocolates --- Elizabeth had a well-known sweet tooth --- accompanied by an inexpensive cambric handkerchief and a note reading, "With love to yourself and baby. Mrs. C."
On the evening of August 9, 1898, after a dinner of trout and corn fritters, Elizabeth and her family went out to the porch to enjoy the summer evening. She passed around the candy, at the same time wondering who had sent it. The following day, the members of the party who had eaten filled bonbons became dreadfully ill; abstainers like her father John Pennington, who preferred his tobacco chaw to candy, and those who had eaten only hard chocolates remained healthy. Most of the stricken quickly recovered, but Elizabeth and her older sister, Ida Deane, died painfully a few days later. Until the end was near, their doctor believed they suffered from cholera morbus, a blanket term for the stomach ailments that were exceedingly common during the summers before refrigerators. At the last moment, too late to save them, he realized they were the victims of arsenic poisoning.
Elizabeth's grieving family sent for Dunning, who arrived in great distress ten days later. He took one look at the anonymous letters and said, "Cordelia."
The box of bonbons was traced to Haas & Sons Confectionery, in the Phelan Building at 810 Market Street in San Francisco and the handkerchief was found to bear a price stamp from the City of Paris (a department store on Union Square also in San Francisco). A clerk was discovered at Owl Drug Store (at 1002 Market Street San Francisco) who remembered he had sold some arsenic to a woman resembling Cordelia Botkin.
The unrelenting coverage of the case by the press meant that the public knew what to expect when the trial finally began on December 6, 1898. A delegation of lawyers, doctors, and bereaved family members arrived by train from Delaware just as the trial began, looking bewildered by what they obviously regarded as the Wild West. In turn, cosmopolitan San Franciscans saw the eastern visitors as provincial and slightly addle-brained.
Piece by piece, the prosecution laid out its evidence, including lengthy chemical and handwriting analyses. Fingerprint analysis, which might have provided proof otherwise lacking in the circumstantial case, was still a science in its infancy, inadmissible in court.
Throughout the testimony, all eyes were on the defendant, who sat stoically still, always in black, always with a white lace handkerchief in her hand. A brief distraction occurred when John Dunning took the stand and the members of the audience had an opportunity to look over the man who had inspired such passion. He turned out to be the whiny sort, with a good cleft chin but narrow shoulders and a head of thinning hair. He inserted a moment of drama into the proceedings when he acknowledged that he had been intimate with many women during his stay in San Francisco, but no, he couldn't recall all of their names. Were there any whose names he could recall? Yes, there were three, besides Mrs. Botkin. But no, he would not reveal them. Dunning spent a couple of nights in the county jail before the defense withdrew its question.
Mrs. Botkin took the stand, speaking first in a spirited tone that gave her listeners a hint that she might indeed be an intelligent, independent woman and then --- on the advice of counsel --- in a more docile manner. She carefully refuted the prosecution's assertions, offering a series of alibis to demonstrate that she could neither have purchased the chocolate nor mailed it. Furthermore, the arsenic, which she bought in June --- long before the crime was committed --- was powdered, not crystalline like the pieces found in the candy.
No matter. The jury convicted her after four hours' deliberation, including time out for dinner. The verdict was a compromise: guilty of first degree murder, to be punished by life imprisonment. When the news flashed on the San Francisco Examiner bulletin board, the crowd cheered. And despite several appeals, Cordelia Botkin spent the rest of her life in San Quentin, dying of "softening of the brain, due to melancholy" on March 7, 1910.
( Some of the information in this article were taken from an article by Betsey Culp )
********
Source:
Lynn Ludlow:
1850 -- Census for Polk County, Mo., (county seat, Bolivar, north of
Springfield in SW corner of the state) shows:
Richard Brown, 36, born in TN, August 1822.
Lemina Brown, 36, born in March 1823, VA
Levina Brown, age 6, born in MO. (Probably Frances/Fannie.)
Alexander Brown, age 4, born in MO
Margaret J. Brown, age 7, born in MO.
Sabrina E. Brown, 8 months. (Lemina in 1860?) Doesn't say birthplace but
probably MO.
1860 -- Census for Brownville, Nemaha County, NE
Richard, 36
Lemina, mom's name ...the sabrina of 1850?
Levina F. (probably Frances), 17, b. MO
Alexander C., 15 (b. MO)
Margaret J., 13 (b. MO)
Lemina, 11. (could be "Sabrina" in 1850) (b. MO)
Cordelia A., 7 (b. MO)
Sarah A., 5, b. NE
Medora, 3, born NE.
1870 -- Census for Kansas City, Jackson Co., MO
Richard, 48
Lemina, 47
Maggie Brown, 21 (formerly Margaret J.)
Ella Brown, 19 (who she? Sabrina/Lemina? Cousin?)
Delia Brown, 17 (formerly Cordelia)
Sally A. Brown, 14 (formerly Sarah A.)
Dora Brown, 12 (formerly Medora)
Ade Brown, 10, born Nov. 5 1860 in NE. ( Emma and Emily in later years)
Nathan McClure, 26, born in OH, husband of
Fannie Brown McClure, 25 (formerly Levina F.)
1880 -- Census for Ferndale, Humboldt County, CA
Richard, 57
Lemina, 56
Dora, 21
Ada. 19
Eric C. Locke, 6, born MO. Grandson (of whom? Maggie?)
1890 Ferndale census destroyed by fire
1900 Federal Census for Healdsburg, Sonoma Co., CA.
Richard Brown, 77, and Lemina Brown, 76: Married 58 years, 8 children, 7
living.
Sarah Brown, 44 (aka Sally, Sadie) .
Emma D. Robarts, age 38 (formerly Emma and Ade and Adora) and . . . husband
William A. Robarts, 44, b. England, arrived 1880. Married to Emma in 1883,
16 years.
Kenneth W. Robarts, 13, born CA
Shirley P. Robarts, 11, born CA
********
Source:
http://genforum.genealogy.com/botkin/messages/371.html
Janet Therkildsen:
Washington Post, The (Washington, D.C.) March 9, 1910
MRS BOTKIN, POISONER, DEAD
Expires at San Quentin, Where She Was Serving Life Term
Special to the Washington Post
San Francisco Mar 8 -- Mrs. Cornelia (sic) Botkin convicted of murdering Mrs. John P. Dunning, by sending poisoned candy across the continent to Dover Del died in San Quentin Prison Monday night. The crime was committed August 4, 1898. Mrs. Botkin fell in love with John P. Dunning then head of Associated Press of this city. She wanted to marry him and she conceived the plan of removing his wife so as to leave him free. The poisoned candy was mailed by her to Mrs. Dunning who ate it with fatal effects. Mrs. Botkin was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang but got a new trial. Then the earthquake came and she was transferred to San Quentin, her sentence being commuted to life imprisonment. Dunning died some time ago in Philadelphia.
Daily Press (Sheboygan, Wisconsin) May 21, 1910
KEPT TRUTH FROM PARENTS
Mrs. Cornelia (sic) Botkin died in the California penitentiary the other day. And the day after she died they took her body up to the village in the green hills of California and buried it. There was a funeral at the little old house where her parents lived and her mother and father sat together at the head of her coffin and the neighbors came and brought flowers and the preacher from the little county church preached a simple, kindly sermon and the village choir sang "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and "Come Ye Disconsolate" quite as if the woman whose body lay in the coffin had been a good woman all her life and had never been tried and sent to the penitentiary for murder. For Mrs. Botkin's father and mother did not know that she had died in prison. They did not know that she had ever seen the inside of a prison anywhere and they never heard of the Botkin case, which was one of the most famous criminal cases ever tried on the Pacific Coast. There is a little paper in the village where Mrs. Botkin's old father and mother lived and the paper printed every day accounts of the trial when it was going on. But they called it the Dunning case and spoke always of Mrs. Botkin as the accused and the old man and the old woman read the paper and talked the famous murder case over together and never even dreamed that "the accused" was their own daughter. And all the little village took hold of hands and formed around the old people a cordon of silence, and woe to anyone who dared to try to break through. We are prone to think of heaven as a place far removed from everything we know here on this earth. But, oh that little village out there, nestling in the green, green hills of smiling California! I wonder if the angels do not look down upon it and smile.
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) May 1, 1905
CONVICTED MURDERESS ASKS TO LEAVE CELL TO FOLLOW BOY'S REMAINS TO THE GRAVE
San Francisco May 1 - Mrs. Cordelia Botkin, convicted murderess, begged a favor today from the judge before whom she was convicted. She asked permission to view the dead body of her son Beverly B. Botkin, who died yesterday in Byron Springs. Just one year to the day from the death of his father Welcome Botkin, Beverly B. Botkin died. His mother is awaiting sentence in the county jail for poisoning Mrs. John P. Dunning and Mrs. Dean at their home in Wilmington Del, and although refused permission to attend the funeral of her divorced husband, Superior Judge Cook has advised the Sheriff to allow her to view the body of her son at the undertaking parlors in this city and to follow his remains to the grave. Mrs. Florence Robertson of 315 Leavenworth Street, who is identified with Beth Adriel Mission in San Jose, who has been a friend of Mrs. Botkin ever since her arrest, and who has stood by her during her long seige in the County Jail has taken charge of the arrangements for the funeral of Beverly Botkin. It was she who called up on Judge Cook when a permit was wanted for the convicted murderess to attend the funeral of the divorced husband Welcome Botkin, and it was she who saw the magistrate in chambers at an early hour this morning and secured the necessary permission for the woman to attend the funeral services.
COULD NOT GIVE AN ORDER
Judge Cook did not instruct the Sheriff to allow Mrs. Botkin to visit the undertaking parlors and attend the funeral. He had no power to do that. He did advise the official to use his discretion in the matter, however, and if Sheriff Curtis sees fit, Mrs. Botkin will be out of her prison cell for a time at least. She will be always in the custody of a deputy, and will not be permitted to get out of his sight.
"I refused to grant a permit when Mrs. Botkin wanted to attend the funeral services of her husband," said Judge Cook this morning. "They had been divorced and I could see no reason why she should be allowed to go to his funeral. In this case, the situation is different. Beverly Botkin was an only son, she appeared to be greatly attached to him, and it was but natural that she should want to follow his body to the grave. I made no order in the matter, but if the Sheriff sees fit, there will be no objection on the part of the court to Mrs. Botkin going out in the custody of an officer."
WAS AN ONLY SON
Beverly B. Botkin was an only son of Mrs. Cordelia Botkin, the convicted murderess, and the late Welcome Botkin, her divorced husband. He was a native son, 31 years of age, and has lived in this state all his life. When his mother was arrested for sending the poisoned candy through the mails which caused the death of two innocent victims in Delaware, the son stood with the Mother as against his father, and up to the time of his death he was loyal to her interests.
His death was caused by valvular disease of the heart, the same affliction that carried off his father. He had been a sufferer for a long time and only recently went to Byron Springs for his health. Word of his death reached his mother in prison last night.
(NOTE: Article says Beverly lived in California his entire life; however, family was in Missouri in 1880 census, and Beverly was noted as being born in Missouri)
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