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CAPTAIN JAMES BROWN was a native of Rowan County, North Carolina, and was born September 30, 1801. His parents were James and Mary Williams Brown. The father was a veteran of the Revolutionary war, having fought under General Francis Marion. While the father farmed, the mother spun, wove and made all the clothing of the family. Their circumstances were only moderate. James in early boyhood helped his father upon the farm and at intervals attended school, receiving a common English education, supplemented by general reading and wide practical experience. He was inclined to literary pursuits, taught school in his early manhood, was a Baptist preacher for a time and served two or three terms as sheriff in the county of Rowan. He had a natural leaning towards the law, but never studied it so extensively as to prepare himself to practice. He was married in 1823 to Martha Stephens.

In the year 1834 he migrated from North Carolina and settled in Brown county, Illinois, where he built a home, but subsequently sold out and moved into Adams county, where about the year 1837 he took up a farm and built. The following year he became a Latter-day Saint. On September 28, 1840, his wife died, leaving him with eight sons and one daughter, the youngest, his son Moroni, only three days old. About the 1st of January, 1841, he married again, and then took up his residence at Nauvoo, where he was soon called into the ministry. He filled a mission to the Southern States, visiting his relatives in North Carolina, and also spent a great deal of time in gathering means for the building of the Nauvoo Temple. He formed a business partnership with a man named Moffit, owning a mill at Augusta, Iowa.

He was with the Saints in their exodus, and at Council Bluffs in the summer of 1846 enlisted in the Mormon Battalion, becoming captain of company "C." At Santa Fe he was placed in charge of certain detachments of the battalion, disabled by their long and arduous march to that point, and was ordered to Pueblo to pass the winter, while the main body, under Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, pushed on to the Pacific coast. The next spring Captain Brown and his command prepared to march thither, but instead of taking the southern route, pursued by their comrades, they traveled by way of Fort Laramie and South Pass, thus falling in with the Pioneers under President Brigham Young and following immediately behind them to Salt Lake valley.

They arrived here on the 29th of July. By this time the battalion’s term of enlistment had expired, and Captain Brown determined to tarry and rest his teams, while awaiting further orders from his military superiors. Early in August he set out for California, taking the muster roll of his detachment for the purpose of drawing the pay due from the Government to the men of his command; the battalion having been honorably discharged at Los Angeles.

Returning from San Francisco in December, 1847, he purchased from Miles M. Goodyear, an old frontiersman, a log fort and lands on the Weber river, paying for them the sum of three thousand dollars. Thither he removed in January, 1848, his sons Jesse and Alexander accompanying him. In the spring of that year they plowed and sowed a few acres with wheat and also planted corn, potatoes, cabbage, turnips and watermelons.

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The spot upon which they located was a portion of the site of the present city of Ogden, the first settlement in Weber county, of which Captain Brown may be considered the pioneer and one of the principal founders. He was not only first upon the ground—barring the primitive occupancy of Mr. Goodyear, who had a Mexican land grant and was in no way connected with the Mormon community—but he encouraged others to settle in that part, generously allowing his brethren to build and plant upon portions of that tract he had purchased, and taking no pay from them for that privilege. The government was less generous to him, for many years later, ignoring Goodyear’s grant from the Mexican government—supposed to have been confirmed when this region was ceded to the United States—it assumed ownership of the land, gave to the Union Pacific railroad on its subsidy each alternate section of the tract and required the old settlers, including Captain Brown’s immediate descendants, to repurchase the homes and farms that they had held for twenty years.

Captain Brown built the first bridges over the Weber and Ogden rivers, and was proprietor of the same from 1849 to 1853, having a charter from the legislature to build these bridges and collect toll for the term of five years. He was assessor and collector of taxes in 1850 and 1851, and a member of the Ogden city council from 1855 continuously to the time of his death. During the most of that period he acted as justice of the peace. He also served a number of terms in the Legislature in the early "fifties," and was intimately associated with Presidents Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and most of the Church leaders of his time.

In the fall of 1852 he went upon a mission to British Guiana, proceeding to San Diego, California, thence by sailing vessel to the Isthmus of Panama, and across it to his place of destination. Finding conditions unfavorable for the introduction of the Gospel in that land, he returned home, coming back by way of St. Louis, where he assisted in the Church emigration of 1853 and 1854. He took charge of a company across the plains, and arrived at Salt Lake City in October of the last-named year. When the Weber Stake was organized he became the first counselor to President Lorin Farr.

Captain Brown’s main characteristics were honesty, truthfulness and integrity. He fearlessly stood by and maintained whatever he believed to be just and right. He was an excellent judge of human nature, and detested a hypocrite, a thief and a liar. Out-spoken and even hot-tempered when provoked, he was nevertheless tender-hearted and ready to forgive on the slightest show of repentance. He was gifted as a speaker, upright as a judge, and would go as far in defending the rights of a beggar as of a man in high station or worth his millions. His sympathies were always with the poor and down-trodden, especially when they had justice on their side. His many acts of benevolence and charity in the early days of famine and poverty are proverbial among the old-time settlers of Weber county.

After the death of his first wife, Captain Brown married four times, the names of his wives being Susan Foutz, Esther Raper, Sally [Sarah Steadwell] Wood and Mary Black. Mary [McRee] Black Brown is reputedly the pioneer cheese maker of Utah. He was the father of twenty-eight children, sixteen of them boys. A number of his sons have risen to prominence, both in ecclesiastical and civil capacities. The captain died at his home in Ogden, September 30, 1863, the sixty-second anniversary of his birth. His death was the result of an accident which had befallen him five days previously. He was working at a molasses mill, expressing the juices of the sugar cane, when his arm caught in the cogs of a roller and was so lacerated that mortification set in and death was inevitable.

Sources:

PAF - Archer files

History of Utah Vol. IV - Biographical History of James Brown, by Orson F. Whitney. George Q. Cannon & Sons Co., Oct 1904. Salt Lake City, UT: pages 187-188.