Nicholas Brown was an American merchant and philanthropist. He is distinguished for his generous contributions to the Baptist Society and to other local charities, as well as for the founding of the Providence Atheneum.
Background
Nicholas Brown was born on April 4, 1769 and was the son of the preceding Nicholas Brown and his wife, Rhoda Jenckes. He was a descendant of the English colonist and Baptist minister Chad Brown (c. 1600–1650), who co-founded Providence. His maternal grandfather was Daniel Jenckes (1701–1774), a judge from a prominent family.
Education
Nicholas graduated in 1786 from Rhode Island College.
Career
After graduating in 1786 from Rhode Island College, which afterward assumed his name, Nicholas Brown went into his father's counting house, and three years later when he became of age the firm was reorganized with the father and son and George Benson as Brown & Benson.
In 1792, after the death of the elder Nicholas Brown, the latter's son-in-law, Thomas Poynton Ives, was admitted into the firm, and his name added to that of the partners. Four years later, when Benson withdrew, the younger men, trading as Brown & Ives, the name under which part of the family interests are still managed, set out upon a career notable in the history of American commercial activity. The earlier energies of the firm were devoted at first to the development of the East India and China trade, just then becoming an important element in American commercial life.
Seven years after John Brown, uncle of Nicholas, had inaugurated in 1787 a trade between East India and Providence by sending the General Washington with a cargo to India, the firm of Brown, Benson & Ives built the John Jay and launched her in the eastern trade. Thereafter until the sale of their last ship, the Hanover, in 1838, many vessels, the Ann and Hope, the Rising Sun, and others, kept the name of Brown & Ives constantly on the distant seas, and this in spite of depredation by English and French, of embargo by our own government, and of shipwreck, and a failing trade.
With the foresight and caution that characterized his father and himself, Nicholas Brown waited until the manufacturing of cotton had been well established by his uncle Moses Brown before his firm bought in 1804 its first water rights on the Blackstone River. When the Embargo of 1812 put a temporary check on shipping, the firm was found well established in the cotton manufactory and in control of a large part of the Blackstone River water power.
With the formation of the Lonsdale Company in the thirties, the character of the firm's business had definitely changed to its present interest.
With a similar caution, and a like reward, Brown & Ives did not at once follow John Brown in his purchase, late in the eighteenth century, of lands in western New York, but ten years afterward they invested a part of their surplus in large tracts on the Ohio.
In the years following the Civil War the Ohio farm-land holdings of the successors of the firm attained great value as urban properties in growing middle-western cities. The relations of Nicholas Brown with the University which bears his name were not simply those of a wealthy benefactor to a chosen object of charity, for family pride and personal affection engaged his interest.
He was educated in the building erected for the old Rhode Island College by the efforts of his father and his uncles; he was a trustee by the year 1791, and treasurer from 1796 until 1825. In 1804 he gave $5, 000 for the endowment of a professorship of oratory and belles lettres, a gift that resulted in the change of the college's name to Brown University as a recognition of the beneficence of himself and of other members of his family.
Achievements
Views
In him was found in special degree the mingling of shrewd business sense, respect for things of the mind and spirit, and sense of responsibility to his community that have always characterized this family of merchants and philanthropists.
Membership
He was a member of the Baptist Society.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In the same Discourse, Wayland observes: "In his ample brow and well-developed forehead, you could not but observe the marks of a vigorous and expansive intellect; while his mouth indicated a spirit tenderly alive to human suffering, and habitually occupied in the contemplation of deeds of compassion. "
President Wayland said of him that his success "testified that boldness of enterprise may be harmoniously united with vigorous and deliberate judgment. "
Connections
Brown married twice: first on November 3, 1791, Ann, daughter of John Carter, long the leading printer of Providence; and second, Mary Bowen Stelle on July 22, 1801. The younger of the two sons by the first wife was John Carter Brown.