Placer
County
Biographies
JAMES F. BROWN
James F. Brown, the leading merchant
of Colfax, Placer County, California, has been a resident of this state for
fifty years. During all this time he has
figured as a businessman in various California towns, has had misfortunes and
reverses, but has met and overcome them, and today, as the result of his own push
and enterprise, he is at the head of a prosperous business.
Mr. Brown is a native of Maine. His ancestors were among the early settlers
of New England and the family was represented in the war for Independence. Originally they were English and Scotch. Grandfather Benjamin Brown was a native of Vassalboro, Maine, and his wife was before marriage a Miss
McClellan. Their son Nathaniel, also a
native of Vassalboro, was born in August, 1781. He married Miss Charlotte Getchel,
a native of his own town, and they became the parents of eight children, only
one of whom, James F., the subject of this sketch, survives.
James F. Brown passed the first
sixteen years of his life on his father’s farm in Maine and received his early
education in the public schools. The
greater part of his education, however, has been obtained in the broad school
of experience, for at the age of sixteen he started out to make his own way in
the world. The first money he made was
as a schoolteacher, at a salary of thirteen dollars and fifty cents per
month. Afterward he worked in his
brother’s store, and was thus occupied until he came to California in
1851. His western trip was made via the
Isthmus route, the Pacific voyage in the ship Northern, commanded by Captain
Randall, which landed at San Francisco July 7th.
Upon his arrival in California, he
went to Sacramento to join his brother, A. D. Brown, who had come to the
Pacific coast in 1849 and was then engaged in jobbing goods. James F. at once took a stock of goods to
Bear’s Bar, and sold goods there and at Elizabethtown and Johnstown, in El
Dorado County, up to 1858, being very successful in his business. In 1856 he met his first loss by fire and was
left without a dollar. His next business
venture was at Wisconsin Hill, Placer County, where in 1859 he was again burned
out. He at once rebuilt and ran a store
there and also one at Monona Flat, conducting both successfully. In 1864 his Monona Flat store was swept away
by fire, resulting in total loss to him.
He had previously disposed of the store at Wisconsin Hill, and after the
fire just referred to he returned to that place and sold goods in his former
store until 1868. That year he removed
to Iowa Hill, where he established himself in business and had a flourishing
trade. At this place also he was the victim
of fire, being burned out in 1870.
Again, however, he rebuilt, and continued
to do a successful business there until 1897, when he sold out and came to
Colfax. Here for two years he was in
partnership with Henry Disque, at the end of that
time purchasing his partner’s interest, and since then doing business under his
own name. His present store, located in
a brick building 28 x 100 feet, is filled with all kinds of general
merchandise, and he also handles farm implements and hay and grain, having two
large warehouses filled with the latter class of goods.
Mr. Brown was married in 1862 to
Miss Lizzy Thompson, a native of England, and their
happy union has been blessed with five children, as follows: Alice Augusta, now Mrs. W. O. Spencer; Russel Warren, in the store with his father; J. Frank, an
attorney of Sacramento; Nellie G., attending school in San Francisco; and
Benjamin, in the store with his father.
For a period of twenty-five years
Mr. Brown has been identified with the I. O. O. F., in which he has always
taken a deep interest, and in which he has passed all the chairs. He is also a member of the Chosen Friends and
politically is a staunch Republican.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 519-520. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.