Background
John Brown was born on October 19, 1744 in Haverhill and grew up in Sandisfield, Massachussets, where his parents, Daniel and Mehitabel (Sanford) Brown, settled about 1752.
John Brown was born on October 19, 1744 in Haverhill and grew up in Sandisfield, Massachussets, where his parents, Daniel and Mehitabel (Sanford) Brown, settled about 1752.
John Brown graduated from Yale in 1771, and then studied law in Providence with his brother-in-law, Oliver Arnold.
In December 1772 John Brown was admitted to the bar in Tryon County, New York. He began to practise in Johnstown, New York, where he is said to have held the post of king's attorney, but in 1773 removed to Pittsfield, Massachussets. Here he served on the town's Committee of Correspondence (appointed June 30, 1774), and on the committee which drafted the non-intercourse resolutions adopted by the Berkshire convention at Stockbridge on July 6, 1774.
After the suppression of the county courts he was a member of the board of arbitrators appointed to settle civil disputes, and he represented his town in the Provincial Congress from October 1774 to February 1775.
In the latter month he volunteered to go to Montreal as agent for the Boston Committee of Correspondence, and set out, charged with the double task of discovering Canadian sentiment toward the revolutionary cause, and of "establishing a reliable channel of correspondence" with the sympathetic element.
On March 29, his mission accomplished, he reported to Adams and Warren from Montreal. In crossing the New Hampshire Grants he had been impressed by the strategic importance of Fort Ticonderoga, which, he wrote, "must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed by the king's troops"; he added that the people of the New Hampshire Grants were ready for "the job".
On May 10, Brown and a little group of Pittsfield men were present with the Connecticut forces when Ticonderoga was taken, and Brown was detailed to carry the news to the Continental Congress. He was commissioned major in Easton's regiment on July 6, 1775, and from July 24 to August 10 scouted into Canada, reporting to Schuyler at Crown Point and by letter to Governor Trumbull of Connecticut. In command for a time of the flotilla on Lake Champlain and discovering that the enemy were preparing gunboats, he counseled immediate advance, volunteering to lead, and on September 15 commanded the detachment of 134 men which initiated the invasion of Canada. The next week, away from headquarters enlisting recruits, he encountered Ethan Allen on the same business, at Longueuil. Brown had 200 men, Allen had eighty, so they decided to capture Montreal. The attack failed and Allen was taken prisoner.
On the night of October 19 Brown and James Livingston, in command of fifty New Englanders and 300 Canadian boatmen, floated guns on bateaux down the rapids of the Sorel (Richelieu), and surprised and captured Fort Chambly with six tons of the powder which the Continentals sorely needed. After the fall of St. Johns ( November 3), Brown and Easton started down the Sorel, driving before them Allen Maclean and his irregulars.
At the mouth of the stream they stopped to complete fortifications begun by Maclean and there on November 19 by audacity as much as by force they intimidated the British fleet coming down the river from Montreal, and caused it to surrender.
Before Quebec, in December, Brown was involved in a bit of insubordination due to distrust of Benedict Arnold, but was won back to duty by Montgomery. After the latter's death Brown claimed a promotion which Arnold refused, charging Brown with plundering the baggage of the officers captured at Sorel. The quarrel thus precipitated lasted for months, during which, his attempts to obtain a court of inquiry repeatedly thwarted, Brown began to make charges against the character and conduct of Arnold and finally resigned his commission in February 1777. He had been commissioned lieutenant-colonel in Elmore's Connecticut Regiment on July 29, 1776.
Returning to Pittsfield, he published there on April 12 a handbill appealing to the public and vigorously attacking his enemy. Elected colonel of the middle regiment of Berkshire militia, Brown was called into the field at the time of Burgoyne's advance in the autumn of 1777. Leading a picked detachment of light troops from Pawlet (October 13-18), he captured Fort George, destroyed the British stores there, and, surprising the enemy's outworks along the Lake, took 293 prisoners but was without sufficient strength to take Ticonderoga. Returning to Pittsfield, he resumed his law practise, in 1778 was elected to the General Court, and in February 1779 was commissioned judge of the county court of common pleas.
In the summer of 1780 he entered the field once more, with the Massachusetts levies summoned to oppose Brant and Sir John Johnson in the Mohawk Valley. On the morning of October 19, leaving Fort Paris with 300 men to join General Van Rensselaer, he was drawn into an ambuscade near Stone Arabia, New York, and killed.
Quotations: "One thing I must mention, to be kept as a profound secret. The Fort at Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed by the King' s Troops. "
He was married to Huldah Kilbourne. Some time after his death, his widow married Jared Ingersoll of Pittsfield.