Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 4.djvu/81

  to captain and when Major W. M. Stone resigned Captain Brown succeeded to that rank. He was in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, Hatchie and Jackson. In Lauman's disastrous charge at Jackson, Colonel Brown was wounded. In July, 1864, he resigned his commission and returned home. In 1870 he was elected Register of the State Land Office, serving four years.  JOHN L. BROWN was born in Essex County, New Jersey, October 31, 1838. He first came to Iowa in 1856 but returned to Indiana where his father had located and attended and taught school. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in Company A, Seventeenth Indiana Volunteers, and at the Battle of Resaca received a gunshot wound which caused the amputation of his arm. Upon the close of the war he attended a Methodist Academy at Danville, and in 1870 moved to Chariton in Lucas County, Iowa, which became his permanent home. He has held many offices in the county, serving seven years as auditor, and resigning to become Auditor of State in 1883. He inaugurated many reforms in the insurance department which arrayed against him powerful corporations which sought to have him impeached for official misconduct. After a lengthy trial he was acquitted of all serious charges and a subsequent General Assembly reimbursed him for expenses incurred in the trial. The reforms which he accomplished placed the insurance companies of the State on a sound basis requiring them to make good impaired capital. Upon the retirement of Mr. Brown from official life he returned to Chariton and purchased the Herald, of which he became the editor and publisher.  TIMOTHY BROWN is an attorney who has practiced law in Marshalltown for a period of nearly fifty years. He was born in Otsego County, New York, December 27, 1827. Mr. Brown was reared on a farm, acquiring his education in the district schools with two years at an academy and read law before coming to Iowa in 1855. He first stopped at Toledo, but soon changed his residence to Marshalltown. He is a lawyer of ability and aside from practice has found time to compile and publish a standard work on “Jurisdiction of Courts.” He has literary and scientific tastes, is a thorough believer in evolution as taught by Huxley, Darwin and Spencer, holding that man is a part of created life, simply higher in development than other animal life. He is the author of a volume called “Biogeny” setting forth his ideas of animate nature. He is independent in politics and opposed to the recent policy of wars of conquest by our Republic. He is an earnest advocate of compulsory education and the establishment of public libraries. JESSE B. BROWNE, one of the earliest lawmakers of Iowa, was born in Christian County, Kentucky, early in the Nineteenth Century.