Audra Browman – Missoula Historian
Biographical History
Audra Arnold Browman was born to Leila Beeman and Harold DeForest Arnold on May 16, 1909 in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She was born on the family farm in the same bed as Lucy Stone, a well-known suffragette and Browman’s great-great-aunt.
Browman received her B.A. from Mt. Holyoke, her M.A. from Stanford University, and her PhD from the University of Chicago in biochemistry. She met Ludvig G. Browman while they were both in graduate school in Chicago and they married on March 25, 1933, at about the same time they received their degrees. The Browmans’ first son, Andrew was born in 1935, and their daughter Audra E. in 1937. That same year they moved to Missoula, Montana, where Ludvig Browman accepted a Zoology Department faculty position at the University of Montana.
While Audra Browman hoped for employment using her biochemistry training, state policy prohibited employment of both husband and wife by the same agency. She worked on research projects for a few years but she focused on being a housewife and mother after the births of Dave in 1941 and Cathe in 1945. Before long, her community involvement grew and in 1952, she was a founding member of the League of Women Voters of Missoula, Montana, and later, the first woman elected to the Missoula County High School Board of Trustees.
In the mid 1960s, inspired by a University of Montana librarian, Browman developed an interest in local history. After that, she combined her community activities with extensive research projects focused on Missoula and northwestern Montana. By the time of her death on June 12, 2002, Browman’s research collection was well known and enjoyed extensive community use.
From the finding aid for Audra Arnold Browman Papers 1908-1999 (University of Montana–Missoula Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections)
Historian’s archives, donated to UM, are treasures of Missoula’s past
Historian’s archives, donated to UM, are treasures of Missoula’s past
2004-10-03T00:00:00Z Historian’s archives, donated to UM, are treasures of Missoula’s pastBETSY COHEN of the Missoulian missoulian.com
October 03, 2004 12:00 am • BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian
A tall black filing cabinet in the University of Montana’s K. Ross Toole Archives is perhaps the most fitting memorial to a woman who spent her quiet hours collecting the history of Missoula and western Montana.
Atop the sturdy metal bin is the name “Audra Browman,” and within it is a bounty of priceless research she amassed in the shadows of her busy life as mother, the first woman elected to Missoula’s school board, founding member of the League of Women Voters, and wife to Ludvig Browman, a UM professor and Missoula County commissioner.
When she died in 2002 at the age of 93, Browman didn’t want a funeral, a memorial service or an obituary to honor her life. She didn’t want the attention.
But Browman also didn’t want the nuggets of Montana history and the odds and ends of Missoula life she had corralled and catalogued for 40-some years to disappear with her death.
To the Missoula Public Library she gifted her vast collection of rare books, and to the University of Montana her voluminous research reaching back to the 1860s and which she painstakingly recorded, cross-referenced and filed with remarkable precision.
Now, two years after Browman’s treasures were bequeathed, the libraries are ready to honor her.
This fall, the newly expanded Montana Room in the public library will be rededicated as the Audra Browman Research Room. There, her books will be available to all.
At UM, her research collection is also available to the public and will serve as a delectable, extraordinary banquet sure to feed research for generations to come.
“Larger cities like Denver, San Francisco and Seattle have extensive histories written, but when you get into a city of Missoula’s size, often those places don’t have that record or that luxury,” said Teresa Hamann, senior archivist at UM’s Mansfield Library.
“When you want to research something, sometimes it’s hard to figure out where to start,” she said. “For someone to undertake the project of this magnitude – this project that Audra undertook – is incredible and wonderful.
“I am stunned by the quantity of work she did; it’s just an amazing body of work.”
For the past year, Hamann has carefully inventoried all of Browman’s collection, which falls into two distinct categories. One portion relates to Browman’s historical research about Missoula, Montana and northwestern Montana, and the other is related to her work with the League of Women Voters of Missoula, Montana, and on community, city and state political issues.
The collection is further divided into nine series categorized by subject, location, news clippings by subject, research notes, published historical resources, research card files, photographs and postcards, League of Women Voters, and finally, a miscellaneous category.
“If her research files don’t offer a complete picture, they offer a researcher a starting point,” Hamann said. “But many times, they do offer the most complete picture of the history for everything from parks to sports to government histories to post offices and polling places.
“Our history is all there for us to learn from.”
That Browman kept exacting and exhaustive research notes, so complete and expertly organized even professional archivists are in awe, comes as no surprise to the people who worked with her and knew her best.
She was, after all, born and raised to a proper New England family and was the great-great-niece of Lucy Stone, a famous suffragette.
Hard work, humility, perseverance, community service, dedication, intellectual exploration, high standards and life without fanfare were ideals she embraced and breathed.
“She had a lively curiosity about who we all were, where we all came from, how it all happened, when and why,” said Audra Adelberger, Browman’s daughter. “She walked, she drove dusty back roads, she read old newspapers and records and diaries. She met old-timers and newcomers, she asked questions.”
During the roaring ’20s, when society was kicking up its heels, Browman was hard at work expanding her brilliant mind. She received a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, a master’s degree from Stanford University and her doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Chicago.
In Chicago, she met her future husband, Ludvig, who upon his graduation accepted a faculty position in UM’s zoology department, and the young couple moved to Missoula.
At that time, Montana policy prohibited employment of both husband and wife by the same state agency, so Browman turned her energies to raising her four children. But as her family grew, so too did her interests outside the home, and by the early 1950s, Browman was quietly becoming a community mover and shaker and the workhorse behind the inception of such organizations as the League of Women Voters of Missoula and Friends of the Library, a nonprofit group which fund raises for Missoula’s Public Library.
“For all the things you did, she did twice as many,” said Lee Ballard, who worked shoulder to shoulder with Browman to create the League of Women Voters.
“She never wanted to be president, but she was willing to be a chairman of the committee and get the work done,” she said. “And when she had a job, she did it.”
Browman always did her best to thwart any public acknowledgement and limelight that others tried to shine her way.
“Her reward was the pleasure of the work she did, and the pleasure of thinking about it,” Adelberger said. “She was always pleased people came to her for help, and that she could provide that.”
As the family story goes, Browman fell into her historical research by accident. One day while combing UM’s library, she asked a librarian some now-forgotten question about Missoula, and the librarian, who didn’t know the answer, told her it would be a great service if she could research the answer.
So she did, and unbeknownst to anyone, including herself, launched her voluntary career as an historian, specializing in Missoula and the surrounding area.
“She became one of my best resources,” said Allan Mathews, formerly Missoula’s historic preservation officer. “If I couldn’t find the information anywhere else, I would know she would have some kind of lead for me.”
Mathews said he’ll never forget the day he called Browman and asked if she knew anything about the American Indian trails that went through the valley.
Browman invited Mathews to her house to peruse her personal library, and Mathews stayed nearly an entire day pouring over her materials.
“Her library was amazing, and she recorded all her notes on these 3-by-5 cards, each with four to five cross references to original sources and other subjects,” he said. “I just can’t imagine the hours she put into that collection process.”
When Mathews was writing the text for the historical plaques that today dot the Clark Fork River walking trails, he asked Browman to review and edit each one.
“She was a brilliant woman who knew so much and you knew her information was accurate,” he said. “She was a great resource, and a hidden treasure.”