ALEXANDER BROWN

Alexander Brown was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, March 10, 1849, his parents being John and Agnes (Robertson) Brown, who had emigrated from Scotland about 1839. They moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1851, where the father died in 1858. The mother came to California in 1861 with three children, John, Christina and Alexander, of whom the two last went East in 1862, but returned to California in 1866. The mother, who was born in 1821, is living with her daughter, Mrs. S. F. Drury, of Newcastle, California. Grandfather Alexander Brown was eighty when he died. The Maternal grandparents were also long-lived and died in Canada, whither they had emigrated from Scotland. The subject of this sketch received the usual education till the age of twelve, but when he went East in 1862 he became a clerk in a grocery store for four years. On his return to California in 1866 he went to work in the pork-packing business in San Francisco for some years, and then to butchering on his own account for a year or two, and afterward into the fruit and produce business for wages for five or six years. February 11, 1879, he came to Walnut Grove and helped his mother in the hotel business for two years, and then bought and sold fruit for about two years. April 23, 1883, he opened a general store, and on June 1, 1886, he succeeded his mother in the hotel business. Meanwhile, in 1884, he had rented 300 acres in the Pearson district, since increasing it to 3,830 acres. On this he raises barley and all kinds of vegetables, making a specialty of beans. In 1887 he raised two crops of barley on a portion of it, and fully 2,000 acres in the district are capable of yielding two crops every year, but labor cannot always be economically used to produce that result. Besides his hotel, store and ranch business, Mr. Brown is agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad’s line of steamers, Wells, Fargo & Co.’s Express, the Western Union Telegraph Company, is assistant postmaster, owns and conducts the warehouse, and as can readily be imagined is very busy indeed. But this does not quite exhaust the catalogue of his industries. In September, 1887, he bought a ranch of 4,385 acres in Colusa County, and entered into possession of the same on April 23, 1888. This is devoted chiefly to stock-raising. Mr. Brown was married February 14, 1871, to Miss Kate Stanford, born in this State, April 21, 1854, daughter of C. P. and Helen (Emmons) Stanford, of San Francisco. Mrs. Brown’s parents and maternal grandparents are still living. Her paternal grandparents died some ten or twelve years ago, about two years apart, aged about eighty. Mr. And Mrs. Brown are the parents of five living children: John Stanford , born October 14, 1873; Arthur Alexander, July 6, 1878; Frank Emmons, February 1, 1883; Agnes Helen, April 27, 1884; Alexander, Jr., September 2, 1888.

Transcribed by Karen Pratt.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 488-489. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.

Sacramento County Biographies