Background
John Brown was born on January 27, 1736 and was the son of James and Hope (Power) Brown, was the third of the four brothers (Nicholas, Joseph, John, and Moses) who formed the mercantile house of Nicholas Brown & Company of Providence.
John Brown was born on January 27, 1736 and was the son of James and Hope (Power) Brown, was the third of the four brothers (Nicholas, Joseph, John, and Moses) who formed the mercantile house of Nicholas Brown & Company of Providence.
His service to the American cause in the Revolution was begun spectacularly enough by his leadership in 1772 of the party that boarded and burned the British armed schooner Gaspee as she lay aground in Narragansett Bay. A reward of £1, 000 was offered for proof of the identity of the leader of the expedition, and John Brown was arrested on suspicion.
He was released from imprisonment and saved from the more unpleasant consequences of his action by the influence of Moses Brown, who, though the youngest of the brothers, seems to have been their helper in all times of serious trouble. Afterward John Brown and his brother Nicholas served the cause by supplying the continental troops with clothing and munitions of war. The records of their dealings with a secret committee of the Continental Congress show that their ships and their foreign connections were put to good service in the American cause.
He was interested in the development of the "Furnace Hope" and during the Revolution made it the chief business of the furnace to manufacture cannon for the army and navy. In his public life, John Brown seems to have supported the American contentions from the beginning. He was active in the Assembly of his state in opposition to the Stamp Act, in support of the non-importation proceedings in 1769 and 1775, and in all crises throughout the Revolutionary period that called for determination and ability. His vigorous efforts in behalf of the adoption of the Constitution were instrumental in bringing Rhode Island into accord with the other federated states.
He was elected to Congress twice, in 1784 and 1785, but failed to put in an appearance at either session. He served one term in Congress, however, from 1799 to 1801.
In 1787 the firm of Brown & Francis, composed of John Brown and his son-in-law John Francis (husband of Abby Brown), sent out the first Providence vessel to engage in the East India and China trade, only three or four years after this trade had been begun by a shipmaster of Salem, Massachussets In December of that year the General Washington cleared for the East, carrying a cargo valued at $26, 348, composed of anchors, cordage, sail cloth, cannon, bar iron, sheet copper, steel, spars, liquors, cheese, and spermaceti candles. A year and a half later she returned to Providence, loaded with tea, silks, china, cotton goods, lacquered ware, and cloves to the amount of $99, 848. This was the auspicious beginning of a trade that continued to bring fortune to Rhode Island for more than half a century.
With his brothers, John Brown was forward in the movement to bring Rhode Island College to Providence from its first location at Warren. It was his hand that laid in 1770 the cornerstone of the first building, the present University Hall of Brown University, and his care as treasurer of the institution during twenty uneasy years helped to establish it on an enduring financial basis.
The house he built on Power St. in 1787, probably designed by his brother Joseph, was said in 1800 to be the finest residence in New England, and it remains to-day one of the most strikingly beautiful examples of eighteenth-century architecture in the country.
John Brown died in Providence, Rhode Island on September 20, 1803, and interred in the Brown family plot in the North Burial Ground in Providence.
Modern historians have not always approved the character and actions of John Brown. He was the Elizabethan merchant-adventurer type in a new setting. When Congress provided for the building of two ships of war in Rhode Island, he was named one of the committee to oversee the work. It is said that in this capacity he permitted work on the vessels to be held up so that his own privateersmen might earlier be fitted for the sea, and that in other particulars he allowed self-interest to guide his actions to a degree disapproved of by his fellow-townsmen.
There seems to be evidence that he rode the wave of patriotic fervor to his own advantage, but even those who criticize specific actions concede him a life of courageous and vigorous commercial activity which brought wealth and prestige to his community.
Of John Brown's appearance, it is on record that he was a man of such "large physical proportions" as to take up a whole chaise seat ordinarily occupied by two persons.
Quotes from others about the person
About the year 1770, John, who has been described as "a man of magnificent projects and extraordinary enterprises, " withdrew from the firm headed by the more conservative Nicholas and set up business on his own account.
He married, November 27, 1760, Sarah, daughter of Daniel and Dorcas (Harris) Smith, by whom he had six children.