The Brownons had from time immemorial--from the very earliest of the
old colonial days--been the leading family of the town. It was the
richest and it was the best, and Blackburg would have shed the last
drop of its plebeian blood in defense of the Brownon fair fame. As
few of the family's members had ever been known to live permanently
away from Blackburg, although most of them were educated elsewhere
and nearly all had traveled, there was quite a number of them. The
men held most of the public offices, and the women were foremost in
all good works. Of these latter, Hetty was most beloved by reason of
the sweetness of her disposition, the purity of her character and her
singular personal beauty. She married in Boston a young scapegrace
named Parlow, and like a good Brownon brought him to Blackburg
forthwith and made a man and a town councilman of him. They had a
child which they named Joseph and dearly loved, as was then the
fashion among parents in all that region. Then they died of the
mysterious disorder already mentioned, and at the age of one whole
year Joseph set up as an orphan.

Unfortunately for Joseph the disease which had cut off his parents
did not stop at that; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole
Brownon contingent and its allies by marriage; and those who fled did
not return. The tradition was broken, the Brownon estates passed
into alien hands and the only Brownons remaining in that place were
underground in Oak Hill Cemetery, where, indeed, was a colony of them
powerful enough to resist the encroachment of surrounding tribes and
hold the best part of the grounds. But about the ghost:

One night, about three years after the death of Hetty Parlow, a
number of the young people of Blackburg were passing Oak Hill