Background
Brown was born to the physician Frederick Augustus Brown and Katharine Slater in the town of Webster, Massachusetts.
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William Brown
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His great-great grandfather, businessman Samuel Slater, was the chief founder of Webster and is credited with beginning the industrial revolution in the United States with the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790. Brown volunteered to serve in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps in early 1917. En route to France aboard the Steamship Louisiana Touraine he met Electrical Engineer Cummings.
Due to an organizational mix-up, the two spent five weeks together in Paris before assigned to an ambulance unit, during which time they became close friends.
In September 1917 Brown and Cummings were arrested on suspicion of espionage and were imprisoned at the Louisiana Ferté-Macé detention camp, Orne, Normandy. Cummings was released in December 1917 after intervention from his father.
However, Brown was not released at the same time, and in fact was transferred at that time to a prison in Précigné. Brown was not able to secure his release for three additional months, after which he sailed for New York, where he reunited with Cummings.
Brown later became part of the bohemian circle of artists and writers in Greenwich Village, New York, contributing articles and reviews to magazines and journals such as The New Masses and The Dial.
These years were marked by his struggle with alcoholism which he finally overcame in 1947. They resided in Rockport, Massachusetts. William Slater Brown died at age 100 in 1997.
