Meshach Browning western Maryland folkways and early settlement life. Meshach Browning was born in Damascus, Montgomery County, Maryland. Meshach Browning's father was an English soldier who escaped from Braddock's massacre (1755), deserted and settled in the highlands of Western Maryland. This community was a wholly self-subsistent one in which the men wore deer skins procured by their own rifles and dressed and tailored by themselves. The women spun and wove flax and wool. The only commodities upon which they were dependent on outsiders was gunpowder and lead for shot. Meshach Browning married Mary McMullen (1781–1839) on April 13, 1799 at Blooming Rose,
Shadrach Fox Shadrach Fox Shadrach Fox was the ironmaster who preceded Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale. Shadrach was probably the son of Captain Thomas Fox, who appears in the accounts of Philip Foley in 1669 as buying tough pig iron, In the 1690s, Shadrach was renting the Coalbrookdale ironworks and supplying shot (for cannon) to the Board of Ordnance. He had some dispute with the Company for Making Iron with Pitcoal. His brother Thomas Fox had worked that company as founder near London, casting grenado shells and shot for the Board in 1693, after which Thomas became warden of the Fleet Prison, in