Tulare County Biographies

SAMUEL C. BROWN

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


In Franklin county, Vt., Samuel Carr Brown, late of Visalia, Tulare county, 
Cal., was born August 17, 1826. He died December 31, 1908. His parents were 
James and Sarah (Smith) Brown, natives respectively of Rhode Island and of 
Massachusetts, and his father was long a merchant and an extensive land owner at 
Swanton, Franklin county, N. Y., but they moved eventually to St. Lawrence 
county, N. Y., where they passed away. Of their four sons and three daughters, 
Samuel Carr was the youngest. He was educated in the common schools, at the 
Pennsylvania College in the Western Reserve, and at Oberlin College, where he 
was a student in 1848. Under the instruction of Judge Wallace of St. Lawrence 
county, N. Y., be acquired a rudimentary knowledge of law; later through long 
connection with the justice court, he gained considerable experience of its 
practice and during all his active life gave much attention to legal matters. In 
1849 he located in Pike county, Ill., and six months later joined a band of gold 
seekers who were turning their faces toward California.
The journey across the plains was begun in April and in September Mr. Brown 
reached the North Fork of the American river, where he mined for a year, but 
meeting with no success then went to San Francisco, where he was for six months 
a steward on the Vincennes, a sloop sailing out and in that port. In January, 
1852, he came to Tulare county in company with about fifty people, most of whom 
were farmers from Iowa. Learning that the Indians had two years before killed 
the primitive white settlers, they built a stockade in which they erected eight 
or ten log houses. He came as a hunter and remained as a citizen, to practice 
law, teach school, buy land and engage in multifarious activities as settlement 
advanced and civilization took root and spread. In the Civil war period he was 
an active sympathizer with the Union cause and Confederate sympathizers made 
three attempts to wreck his office, but United States troops preserved order 
till the end of the war, by a request of a committee of three prominent 
Republicans and three prominent Democrats.
For a time Mr. Brown had as his law partner William G. Morris, later was a 
member of the firm of Brown & Daggett, and in 1891 retired from professional 
work and until his death gave personal supervision of his extensive property 
interests, which included an office building in Visalia, twenty-five hundred 
acres of farm land near that town and a half interest in four thousand acres in 
the mountain foothills. His land was divided into five ranches, most of which he 
usually leased. Many of the important enterprises of Visalia were encouraged and 
promoted by Mr. Brown. He was influential in the establishment of the Bank of 
Visalia, of which he was a director. The same may be said of his relationship to 
the local ice concern and to the Visalia Steam Laundry. He was a director of the 
Tulare Irrigation Company and of the soda works. Politically he was a Freesoiler 
and later a Republican. During early days here he was for two years district 
attorney, for two terms mayor and for three terms a member of the city council.
After Mr. Brown became a citizen of Visalia he married Miss Mary F. Kellenburg, 
a native of Illinois. The following are their children who are living: May, wife 
of William H. Hammond, of Visalia; Fannie, wife of C. G. Wilcox of Visalia; 
Philip S., who is succeeding as a farmer in Tulare county; Maude, who married J. 
E. Combs, of Visalia; and Helen, who is a member of her mother's household.
 
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - 
Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913, pp. 754-755