Alexander Brown is the son of Captain James Brown and Martha Stephens Brown, born on March 3, 1826 near Lexington, North Carolina.

Alexander became a convert to Mormonism with his father's family.  He was baptized in Adams County, Illinois in 1840. When he was about ten years old his parents moved to Brown County, Illinois, and later to Adams County, Illinois. There his father took up a large tract of land. In this sparsely populated country schools were scarce but he had learned to read and the rudiments of a common education with his father's assistance, who had been a school teacher in his younger days.

After his father's conversion to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the family moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. After his mother Martha's death in 1840, Alexander performed the labor of an adult in whatever there was to do. Largely, this was farming for that was the main occupation in those days of pioneering in a new coiuntry.

After the exodus from Nauvoo, with his father's family, his stepmother, Esther Jones Raper Brown, Abigail Abbott, and her family, whom his father had undertaken to emmigrate to the Utah valley, Alexander performed his duty well, driving ox teams, making camp, and the many tasks incurred in that memorable move to a place where they could worship God unmolested by enemies and blood-thirsty mobs.

Alexander started west with the general exodus of the Saints in 1846. When the Saints arrived at Council Bluffs, Iowa, volunteers were summoned for the United States war with Mexico. Alexander then enlisted, together with his father and a younger brother, Jesse Sowell Brown, in the Mormon Battalion. His father was commissioned Captain in Company "C", Alexander and his brother Jesse, served respectively as Corporal, and Sargeant in their father's company. and marched with that body of men to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they were assigned to the sick detachment under his father.

They went through all the sufferings of that terrible march.  Alexander's special work was to ford the streams on his horse and search out the best place for the army to cross with their outfits. Being constantly wet he contracted rheumatism which made him lame for the rest of his life. One leg being shorter than the other and badly twisted, yet he never used crutches and continued farming as his vocation. He and his brother, Jesse, continued with their father when he was ordered to bring the sick soldiers in the Batallion to the Salt Lake valley This group arrived in Salt Lake July 30, 1847, five days after Brigham Young's first company arrived. They assisted in building the first place of meeting in Salt Lake on what is now Tabernacle Square or the Temple block in Salt Lake City. They erected a bowery within two weeks after their arrival in the valley.

Their father was sent to San Francisco in Augut 1847 to collect the pay due the battalion members in and Alexander and his brother Jesse went with him on his perilous trip, The following February 1848,their father under the direction and councel of the authorities bought the Goodyear claim in Weber County and moved his wife Mary Eliza Black Brown and bably, Mary Eliza, and Alex and Jesse to the fort on the Weber River. As Alex and Jesse preceeded their father two days, they plowed the first land that had ever been plowed in Weber County.

In the late 1850's Alexander bought a tract of land north of the Ogden River in a township called Lynn. Here he built a rock house where he reared his family and continued farming. This house still stands.

Children of Alexander Brown and Amanda McMurtrey Brown:

Mary Eliza Brown 1851-1931, md. Lyman Keyes
Phoebe Brown 1853-1853. lived 2 days
Alexander Brown, Jr. 1854-1887, md. Walker
James Lysander Brown 1857-; md. Rachel Sylvia Rice of Farmington,UT on 3 July 1877
Amanda Louella Brown 1859-1889
Samuel Loami Brown, 1862-1912, md. Mary or Maria Layman
Lois Brown 1864- .
William Riley Brown 1868-
Effie Brown 1873-

April 20, 2004 - Richard Creeger (current owner) with Richard Moyle standing on the south side of Alexander Brown's house at 159 West Second Street in Ogden, Utah

Alexander was a quiet unassuming man. He had little to say, and while he believed in the Gospel he was inactive. I had the privilege of boarding with him and Aunt Amanda while teaching in the Lynn School in 1861 and became well acquainted with the family who were living at home. The sons had married and were all away but Lusila, Lois Effie, and Lysander's litlle girl Grace, composed the family, As I had been reared in a home where family prayers and blessings on the food was a custom, I asked Uncle Alex why he didn't ask the blessing on the food. He said he knew he should but he had gotten out of the habit. I suggested that he begin and let us all take our turn in asking the blessing. Aunt Amanda approved of it, so while I remained in the home we took turns in asking a blessing on the food and also in family prayers.

Amanda passed away on March 15, 1918 in Ogden, Weber, Utah

Alexander spent the remainder of his life in Weber County where he passed away in Ogden on April 21 [22], 1910 and is buried at the Ogden City Cemetery.

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Sources:

PAF - Archer files

The Mormon Battalion Film 1,697,614 #20, Located by Erold Clark Wiscombe

Brown Book of Remembrance written by Hattie Critchlow Jensen and Loella Brown Tanner prior to 1948

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