Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/440

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BROWN
BROWNE

ment in the province of Quebec. He has been a prolific contributor to the press of Montreal, New York, and Florida.


BROWN, Thurlow Weed, journalist, d. at Fort Atkinson, Wis., 4 May, 1866. He was for some years editor of the "Cayuga Chief," and from 1860, when he removed to Atkinson, edited the "Wisconsin Chief." He published a volume of "Miscellanies," mostly on the subject of temperance, of which he was an eloquent advocate; "Minnie Hermon, the Landlord's Daughter" (New York, 1854); "Why I am a Temperance Man" (Auburn, 1853); and "Temperance Tales and Hearthstone Revelations."


BROWN, William, Argentine naval officer, b. in Foxford, Ireland, 22 June, 1777; d. in Buenos Ayres, 3 May, 1857. He went to Baltimore in 1793, and three years later he was impressed by a British man-of-war. In 1814, being at Buenos Ayres in command of an English merchant-ship, during the war of independence, he was induced to enter the naval service of that country. Receiving the command of its flotilla, he engaged, in April, 1814, some Spanish vessels off the island of Martin Garcia. In the ensuing May a more decisive engagement took place off Montevideo, while Gen. Alvear attacked the city by land. Four of the enemy's vessels were taken or destroyed, and the rest dispersed, causing the speedy capture of that city. Brown was made admiral, planned an expedition against the Spaniards in the Pacific ocean, and was for some time successful, taking many rich prizes. After greatly annoying the Spanish commerce in the Pacific, he was returning, when he was captured by a British ship-of-war, carried into Antigua, and condemned upon frivolous allegations. Owing to this proceeding. Brown lived at Buenos Ayres in retirement, and almost in poverty, until the war with Brazil, which began in 1826, when he defeated the Brazilian fleet, and rendered other important services.


BROWN, William, Canadian author, b. in Turriff. Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 14 April, 1835. He is the son of James Brown, LL. D., author of "The Forester." He received his education in the Scottish parochial schools until his seventeenth year, after which he was entirely self-taught. He was a railway director in Aberdeenshire from 1864 till 1869, also commissioner for that county. In 1871 he emigrated to Canada, and in 1875 was given charge of the Ontario agricultural college. His writings include "British Sheep Farming" and "Claims of Arboriculture as a Science."


BROWN, William Faulkner, clergyman, b. in New York city; d. in New Jersey, 22 Aug., 1881. He was educated as a physician, and during the civil war served as surgeon on the U. S. steamer "Mystic," and afterward as examining surgeon at Park barracks. New York. He subsequently went to Rome as a newspaper correspondent, and re- ported the proceedings of the Vatican council for Catholic newspapers, having been converted to Catholicism in 1857. After his return from Rome he studied in a theological seminary, and took clerical orders in Louisville, Kentucky. He was assigned to a parish in Georgia, where he suffered so severely from the effects of yellow fever that he was obliged to remove to the north, and in 1880 accepted the place of chaplain to St. Joseph's hospital at Paterson.


BROWN, William Henry, capitalist, b. in North Huntington, Westmoreland co., Pa., 15 Jan., 1815; d. in Philadelphia, 12 Oct., 1875. He was in early life a canal-boatman and coal-digger, became a small dealer in coal in Pittsburg, afterward part owner in a mine, and in 1848 commenced mining and coking for the Pittsburg iron furnaces. In 1858 he began the new enterprise of sending coal in flat-boats, towed by steamers, down the Mississippi. He supplied the government with coal at Cairo and Memphis during the war, also furnished it for the gas-works of St. Louis, and stood at the head of the coal trade of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi.


BROWN, William Hill, poet, b. in 1766; d. in Murfreesborough, N. C, 2 Sept., 1793. He wrote a tragedy, founded on the death of Major John Andre, and a comedy. His "Ira and Isabella" was published in 1807.


BROWNE, B. Bernard, physician, b. in Wheatlands, Queen Anne co., Md., 11 June, 1842. After graduation at Loyola college, Baltimore, he studied medicine in the university of Maryland, and was graduated there in 1867. Several years of practical experience in the Bay View asylum led him to turn his attention chiefly to surgery as applied to the diseases of women, and to obstetrics. He holds professorships in the medical college of Baltimore, in the polyclinic and post-graduate medical school of that city, and is president of the Baltimore clinical society. He has successfully introduced a new operation for chronic inversion of the uterus, and has written extensively for the medical journals on obstetrical and gynaecological subjects.


BROWNE, Charles Farrar, humorist, b. in Waterford, Me., about 1834 ; d. in Southampton, England, 6 March, 1867. Mr. Browne was much better known as "Artemus Ward " than by his real name. He began learning the printer's trade when under fourteen years of age as a compositor on the Skowhegan (Me.) "Clarion," and when about fifteen was working in a similar capacity on the " Carpet Bag," a comic weekly journal in Boston. To this he made his first contributions. Before abandoning type-setting for literary work, he was one of the most expert compositors in the United States. After leaving Boston, he became a reporter on the Cleveland " Plaindealer," a daily paper of extensive circulation. Here the idea of writing in the character of a showman, and giving his observations on all sorts of topics, first occurred to him, and he began his first series of "Artemus Ward's Sayings." At the outset these articles were written carelessly, and without any expectation that they would serve for anything more than "filling"; but, finding that they attained an extended notoriety, he bestowed more care upon them, and their real merit made even the atrocious spelling attractive, and gained for him a reputation as one of the most clever and original humorous writers in the country. When "Vanity Fair" was established in New York, he was asked to become one of its contributors, and after a time its editor. Its existence was brief but brilliant. During this period he projected his humorous lectures, delivering the first one in Brooklyn, and afterward repeating the series in other cities. The titles were "The Babes in the Wood," "Sixty Minutes in Africa," etc. These proved very successful. In 1862 he visited California and Utah in search of materials for illustrating the peculiar characteristics of Mormon life. The result of this expedition was a series of comic lectures on Mormonism with panoramic accompaniment, which were the best of their kind ever attempted either in this country or in England, and of so novel a character that they were very popular. About 1864 the premonitory symptoms of pulmonary consumption, the disease from which he finally died, made their appearance, and he was obliged for a time to desist