Pauline Brown

Pauline Brown, a longtime resident of Clarksville and the unofficial historian for Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, died Thursday after having a brain aneurysm, her family said. She was 81.

Her nephew, Douglas Baylor, 58, said Brown was taken to the hospital for treatment Wednesday evening.

"She was a force in this city and a remarkable spirit, a remarkable woman," said Margaret Keys, who said she was Brown's neighbor for 16 years. "I grew to love her. I will miss her sorely, and so will the community."

The Rev. Steve Manning, pastor of Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, where Brown had been a member since she was 8 years old, said that Brown was a well-known "cornerstone of Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church and the community."

He said the spunky choir soloist was a mainstay at Wednesday prayer and Sunday services. "She was a wealth of knowledge, love and compassion," Manning said. "She studied, she believed, and she worshipped. And she was always offering a word of encouragement. She exemplified a true servant of God."

Brown was a widow. Her husband, Eugene "Bubba" Brown, died of a heart attack in 1964, and Brown never remarried, Baylor said. She is survived by four children: Paulette, who is better known as "Pumpkin," Eugene, Archie and RuthAnn, Baylor said.

Clarksville was founded in 1871 by Charles Clark, a former slave who settled on two acres on West 10th Street. The area soon grew into a thriving black community as families moved into wood-frame houses, prayed at Sweet Home church and taught their children at the Clarksville School.

But the community started changing in the 1920s. Two-story mansions and modest homes appeared nearby. Clarksville, once surrounded by woods, became another pocket of urbanized Austin. In the 1970s, construction of MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) wiped out nearly a third of Clarksville's houses. Affluent white residents bought and renovated homes, boosting property values, driving up tax bills and forcing many black families to move.

Neighbors fought back. For months, as many as 100 residents picketed new construction on Sundays to protest the gentrification.

Then in 1978, Brown and other residents started the Clarksville Community Development Corp. The nonprofit agency attempted to save low-income housing in an increasingly high-income city, buying and refurbishing houses with federal grants, city money and private loans.

"If I ever win the lottery," she told an American-Statesman reporter in 2003, "I am going to buy every lot in this area so I can make sure the community is preserved."

Baylor said that his aunt was an advocate for the community because "the people in Clarksville were always mistreated and neglected. The streets didn't get paved in Clarksville until the 1970s. Other streets got drainage, but not in Clarksville. She believed it was because it was predominantly African American."

RuthAnn Brown said Friday that memorial services would be held for Pauline Brown at King Tears Mortuary, 1300 E. 12th St., on Sept. 4. Services will be held at Sweet Home, 1725 W. 11th St., at 11 a.m. on Sept. 5.

"I would not be surprised if her sphere of influence did not reach from the statehouse of Texas government down to the smallest house in Clarksville," Manning said. "There will be people from all walks of life who will speak highly of her influence in their lives."

Joshunda Sanders, AMERICAN-STATESMAN; jsanders@statesman.com; 445-3630