San
Joaquin County
Biographies
FRANK G. BROWN
For many years the name of Bramman
& Brown has been connected with the building and industrial life of Tracy
through extensive handling of plumbing contracts, installation of pumping and irrigation
equipment and plants, and doing general repair work in all the lines
mentioned. Since the death of Mr.
Bramman, Frank G. Brown has assumed the management of the business. He was born at Georgetown, Colorado, on
January 31, 1877, being a son of Jacob and Minnie (Frotcher)
Brown. In 1879 the father met his death
by accident in a mine at Georgetown, Colorado.
In 1884 the widowed mother with her family removed from Colorado to
California, settling at first at Lincoln, Placer County, but shortly removed to
Hayward, where Mr. Brown’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Bramman, who married Miss
Maria B. Brown, established a plumbing shop.
Benjamin Bramman was a mere child when with his parents he came to
America from Germany. He settled with
his family at Tracy in 1897, where he established a hardware store and plumbing
shop, and was building up a good business when death overtook him. Mrs. Bramman soon after her husband’s death
took her brother, Frank G. Brown, subject hereof, into the firm. The hardware business was sold to the Tracy
Mercantile Company, and the sister and brother, under the firm name of Bramman
and Brown, continued to conduct the plumbing, sheet metal, pump and dairy
supply business until 1917 when Mr. Brown bought out his sister. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Bramman became the
parents of one child, Minnie Bramman, who resides with her mother at Oakland
where Mrs. Jacob Brown also resides.
Frank G. Brown was reared and
educated in the school of Hayward. He
was twenty-one years of age when he came to Tracy. Under the efficient direction of his
brother-in-law, the late Benjamin Bramman, he thoroughly learned the plumbing,
tinning, sheet metal, pump and dairy supply trade, and ever since Mr. Bramman’s death has been the active head of this large and
growing business.
Mr. Brown’s marriage united him with
Miss Elizabeth A. Ewald, a daughter of the late
Theodore Ewald of San Francisco. Her mother still resides in San
Francisco. They are the parents of one
daughter, Bertha. Mr. Brown is a member
of the local board of trade and politically is a Republican. He is a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge No.
118 of Tracy. He has encouraged civic
and municipal improvements, good streets and roads, and was a loyal supporter
of the great irrigation project that has resulted in the success of the West
Side Irrigation District and the cutting up of large acreages into small home
tracts, and which is creating a new era of prosperity for this city of homes
and opportunities.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
799-800. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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