Ralph Hall Brown was an American historical geographer. He is mostly noted for his written works, the most popular book titled "Historical Geography of the United States".
Background
Ralph Hall Brown was born on January 12, 1898 in Ayer, Massachussets, the third son and fourth of five children of William Brown and Nellie Eliza (Leavitt) Brown. His paternal grandfather, Michael Brown, had emigrated from County Clare, Ireland, in 1848; his mother was descended from an old New Hampshire family.
Education
Ralph attended the Ayer public schools and entered Massachusetts State College in Amherst in 1915, but left two years later. After working for a time in his father's drugstore, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in history and graduated with the B. S. degree in 1921. He then began graduate work in geography at the University of Wisconsin, receiving the Ph. D. in 1925 with a dissertation entitled "The Economic Geography of the Middle Connecticut Valley. "
Career
Brown began his teaching career at the University of Colorado, as instructor (1925 - 1927) and later assistant professor (1927 - 1929). His early research, continuing through the mid-1930's, included pioneering attempts to apply the current field methods of cultural geography, developed in humid areas, to the mountain and piedmont regions of the semiarid West. His move to the University of Minnesota in 1929 as assistant professor of geography initiated the major phase of his life's work.
He was asked to initiate a course in historical geography, and during a year's leave spent in East Coast libraries (1936 - 1937) he made a comprehensive examination of the geographical writings of Americans and of European commentators on America during the late colonial and early national eras.
Half a dozen substantive articles, a lengthy study of the geographies of Jedidiah Morse, and an important statement of his critical method, "Materials Bearing upon the Geography of the Atlantic Seaboard, 1790 to 1810" (Annals of the Association of American Geographers, September 1938), led to Brown's major scholarly work, Mirror for Americans: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard, 1810 (1943), a landmark in American geography for its technical scholarship, distinctive historical method, and literary presentation.
A synoptic cross-sectional view of the area's systematic and regional geography as seen through the eyes of an imagined Jeffersonian savant, "Thomas Pownall Keystone, " this carefully annotated work demonstrated that geographic analysis of a region could profitably include images and concepts--how people perceived the geographical environment and how those perceptions affected behavior--as well as the actual material conditions.
Brown was promoted to associate professor at Minnesota in 1938 and to professor in 1945.
He served the Association of American Geographers as secretary (1942 - 1945), a post made extraordinarily burdensome by the war, and as editor of its Annals beginning in 1947.
In the midst of these professional labors he worked on his second major book, Historical Geography of the United States. Published a week before his death in 1948, this has remained the basic text in the field. The coverage is uneven, reflecting to a large degree what Brown himself had been able to accomplish in field and library work.
His lectures were well organized and meaty, but appealed primarily to advanced students.
Brown died of an apparent heart attack. Rumors of possible suicide arising after his death were countered immediately by an official investigation of the University of Minnesota. He was buried in Sunset Memorial Park in Minnesota.
Achievements
Ralph Hall Brown was an important antecedent of the perceptual approach to historical geography. His work in reconstructing the past was characterized by the use of a wide variety of original sources, eyewitness accounts, and contemporary maps, published and unpublished. Among many contributions, the most outstanding were his two books, Mirror for Americans (1943) and Historical Geography of the United States (1948).
The father was a Roman Catholic, the mother a Congregationalist, and Ralph was reared in his mother's church.
Views
Prominent themes were man's modification of the biotic environment and patterns of settlement, agriculture, and commerce, viewed from a strongly regional perspective. As in his Mirror, Brown relied heavily on contemporary maps and eyewitness accounts, and suggestively emphasized the role of concepts, true and false, about the land in each period.
Membership
Ralph Brown was a member of the Association of American Geographers.
Personality
As a child he was a somewhat solitary student of nature. A modest, self-effacing scholar, always generous of his time, he was a congenial colleague.
Quotes from others about the person
Few students continued his scholarly explorations, perhaps because his methods and researches reflected too closely his own special interests; but during the 1960's a newer generation of geographers came to recognize the validity of Brown's dictum that "Men at all times have been influenced quite as much by beliefs as by facts. "
Interests
Brown's childhood love of the outdoors and of making things was continued in his later avocations of camping, hiking, fishing, working with hand tools and gardening.
Connections
On March 21, 1924, he married Eunice Rasmussen. They had three children: George Burton, Nancy Eleanor, and Laura Leavitt.