Isaac Brown was born on October 4, 1787, in Rhode Island to Isaac and Amey Brown. He married Lydia Williams on April 1, 1810, and they had at least six children: Nathaniel, born on February 22, 1811; Alice, born on November 8, 1812; Amey, born on February 22, 1814; Mary, born on April 4, 1817; Adeline, born on April 9, 1820; and Isaac, born on July 12, 1825. His wife died in 1848, and he married Caroline Bartlett on January 30, 1850. He worked as a merchant in Providence, and by 1860, he owned $38,400 of real estate and $10,000 of personal property. He employed a coachman and at least two white domestic servants. He retired in the 1860s, and by 1870, he owned $100,000 of real estate and $20,000 of personal property.

 

He was a prominent member of Providence society. He served as a director of the Providence Bank and the first treasurer of the Providence and Worcester Railroad Company. According to an early biographer, he “maintained an unstained reputation as a merchant and a citizen. He was a man of dignified and austere manners, of old-fashioned integrity, and though of kindly nature, severe in his estimate of modern innovations upon morals and manners.” He died in Providence on September 7, 1872.

 

Image: Isaac Brown (The Chad Browne Memorial: Consisting of Genealogical Memoirs of a Portion of the Descendants of Chad and Elizabeth Browne)

SOURCES