Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/469

BROWN.BROWN. him in a hand-bill as a traitor, saying, " Money- is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country ! " Colonel Brown served in the Massachusetts legislature in 1778 and in the state militia. He marched to the relief of General Schuyler in the Mohawk valley in 1780, and, with forty-five of his command, was led into ambush and killed by the Indians at Stone Arabia, Palatine, N. Y., Oct. 19, 1780.

BROWN, John, senator, was born at Staimton, Va., Sept. 12, 1757. His course at Princeton college was ended by the closing of the college at the retreat of the American army. He joined the army and served bravely throughout the war. He then finished his education at Washington college, and in 1782, having obtained admission to the bar, he entered upon the practice of the law, removed to Frankfort, Ky., where he was elected a member of the Virginia legislature from the district of Kentucky, and in 1787 was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, serving from 1787 to 1789. He was then elected as a rep- resentative to the 1st U. S. Congress, serving until 1792, when he was elected a U. S. senator for the short term. In 1793 he was elected to the senate for the full term and was re-elected in 1799, serving for fourteen years. He voted to locate the seat of government on the Potomac. He died in Frankfort, Ky., Aug. 28, 1837.

BROWN, John, clergyman, was born in Ireland June 15, 1763. At an early age he was brought by his parents to America, and settled in South Carolina. His early boyhood being spent in farm work, his education was very meagre, and at the age of sixteen he volunteered in the army. He served bravely throughout the revolutionary war, when, after a course in theology, he began preaching, taking charge of the church in the Waxhaw settlement in 1788. Here he preached for twenty -one years, when he resigned to accept the chair of logic and moral philosophy in the University of South Carolina. In 1811 he was elected to the presidency of the University of Georgia, where he remained for five years. In 1816 he assumed pastoral charge of a church in Hancock county, Ga. He died at Fort Gaines, Ga., Dec. 11, 1842.

BROWN, John, clergyman, was born in New York city May 19, 1791. At the age of twenty, having finished his course at Columbia college in 1811, he studied theology under Bishop Hobart, and in 1814 was ordained to the priesthood. For three years he was rector of Trinity church, Fish- kill, N. Y., and then removed to Newburg, N. Y., where he was rector of St. George's church for sixty-three years. He delivered an address of welcome to Lafayette at the headquarters of General Washington, at Newburg, in 1824. He died in Newburg, N. Y., Aug. 15, 1884.

BROWN, John, abolitionist, was born at Tor- rington. Conn., May 9, 1800; son of Owen and Ruth (Mills) Brown; grandson of John and Han- nah (Owen) Brown, and lineally descended through John and Mary (Eggleston) Brown, John and Elizabeth (Loomis) Brown, and Peter and Mary(Gillett)Bro^^n, from Peter Brown, who came to Ply- mouth in the Ilay- /oii'er in 1620. In 1805 the parents of John Brown removed to Hudson, Ohio, where he learned the trade of tanning from his father. His father be- longed to the early school of abolition- ists, and his own op portunities of obser\ - ing the cruelties prac tised upon the imfor- tunate colored race, imbued him with a strong purpose to do what he might to effect the redress of their wrongs. His adventurous spirit was developed by a childhood spent upon the borders of the wilderness. Before his twelfth year he was frequently sent in charge of cattle, some- times a hundred miles through an unsettled country. When sixteen years of age he was sent to Plainfield, Mass. , in order that he might attend an academy, and in 1819, shortly after his return to Ohio, he set up in business for himself as a tanner. In 1820 he married his first wife, Mrs. Diantha Lusk, was made postmaster of Richmond, Pa., in 1826, and held that office dur- ing the administrations of Presidents John Q. Adanis and Andrew Jackson. In 1835 he re- moved to Franklin, Ohio, where he made trouble in the church by his habit of admitting negroes into his own family pew. Four years later he made his family covenant against the national sin, and gradually grew to believe the extirpation of slavery a mission committed to him personally. In 1840 he returned to Hudson. Ohio, and in 1846, in partnership with a Mr. Perkins, engaged in the wool commission business at Springfield, Mass. ; this venture not being successful, he went to Eng- land, hoping to better it. and there met the lead- ing English abolitionists, who listened rather coldly to his plans for emancipation. In all his varied enterprises, the purpose he had laid out for himself was never absent from his mind, and it was in furtherance of his plans for the ameliora- tion of the condition of the negro race that, in 1849, he bought a farm in North Elba, N. Y., near a tract of land given by Mr. Gerrit Smith for the occupation of a colony of colored persons, emanci-