Biography

James Brown Jr., later known as Capt. James Brown, was born September 30, 1801, in Rowan (later Davidson) County, North Carolina. Along with his immediate family and most of his siblings and their families, James Jr. joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1839 while living in Illinois. He became an ardent convert, served several missions for the Church, and, most famously, captained the Mormon Battalion’s Company C, the sick detachment that wintered in Pueblo and then marched to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, arriving just five days after Brigham Young’s vanguard company. James Jr. later became the founder of Ogden, Utah (initially called Brownsville), where he and his family settled. A polygamist, James Jr. had 13 wives and 28 children, and his descendants today number in the thousands.[1]

James Brown Jr. and his family members identified as white, but as late as the mid-twentieth century, some family members reported hearing--and dismissing--rumors that the Brown family had “Negro blood.”[2] With the advent of DNA testing, significant numbers of Brown family members discovered African ethnic markers on their genetic reports, lending credence to formerly dismissed rumors. A study of multiple DNA tests of descendants of James Brown Jr. by Paul Woodbury of Legacy Tree Genealogists traced these genetic markers back to James Jr. and determined that he was approximately 1/8 Black, an “octoroon” in the parlance of the nineteenth century.[3] That could mean that one of his great-grandparents was Black, or that more than one grandparent was mixed-race. In James Jr.’s case, contemporary records suggest that both his grandfather William Brown and his grandmother Margaret Brown had Black ancestry.[4]

Contemporary documentation of the Brown family’s mixed-race status appears in an 1821 North Carolina court case. In that case, the attorney for the defense described James Jr.’s grandfather William Brown, his wife, and their children in this way: 

upon inquiry of old & respected persons, now living in Davidson County, it appears that William Brown, /the father of James [Sr],/ and the wife of William were colored people, that they had the following children[:] Wm Brown, James Brown [Sr.], Charity Brown, Betty Brown, Hannah Brown, Pegg[y Brown], Susanna Brown & Constant Brown; . . . all of whom were colored persons; & from their appearance & complexion, afforded evidence to every body, that they were of mixed blood.[5]

William Brown left a will in 1772, naming his wife and children. The 1821 court case also names his children. This and the fact that James Brown Sr. and his son James Jr. were actively involved in the court case make at least two things clear: 1) Both documents refer to the descendants of William and Margaret Brown, and 2) James Jr. knew that his neighbors considered his family to be “colored” or “mixed race.”

Mixed race people accounted for the vast majority of the free Black population in North Carolina—at least 70% according to historian John Hope Franklin. By the 1790 US Census, North Carolina had approximately 4000 free Black people within its total population of around 300,000. Fewer than 100 of these lived in Rowan County, where they followed the same rural, agricultural lifestyle as their white neighbors.[6] No names were attached to the 1790 census figures for free nonwhite persons, so it is impossible to know whether the Browns were counted as free Black at that time.

The Brown family lived in rural Rowan County (later Davidson County), North Carolina from at least as early as 1772, when William Brown’s will was recorded.[7] Some family records also claim William’s son James Sr., father of James Jr., was born in Rowan County in 1757, which would push the family’s residence in Rowan County at least 15 years earlier.[8] The long durance of the Brown family in the area meant that local knowledge of the family’s mixed-race status was likely widespread, as evidenced by the 1821 court’s claim that “old & respected persons, now living in Davidson County” supplied the information about the Brown family being “colored.” Such racial categorizations relied on both local memory of a family’s ancestry and reputation and evaluation of physical characteristics such as skin color and hair texture.[9] Thus, the memories of “old and respected persons” as well as their judgment of the Brown family’s “appearance & complexion, afforded evidence to every body, that they were of mixed blood.”[10]

Descriptions of James Brown Sr. handed down through the Brown family noted his “dark complexion.”[11] While “complexion” had multiple meanings in the eighteenth century, by the early nineteenth century it had come to be primarily associated with skin color, which “began to consistently be privileged as the sign of racial identity."[12] The defense attorney’s argument found in the court case above is consistent with the rationales found in numerous contemporary court cases attempting to categorize mixed-race people as either Black or White in order to assign them the attendant restrictions or privileges of each category.[13]

Given the lack of any personal documents from the Brown family during their time living in North Carolina, it is difficult to say what effect their mixed-race status had on their lives. Historian A. B. Wilkinson argues that North Carolina followed the pattern of its northern neighbor Virginia in terms of restrictions placed on mixed-race people: “By the 1720s, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina had implemented racially discriminatory legislation that was stronger than anywhere else in the British Empire. These three colonies had great control over interracial families and free people of blended ancestry and maintained the sharpest legal forms of hypodescent [defining anyone with partial Black ancestry as Black] in the eighteenth century. European colonists came to view people of mixed lineage in a largely negative light, regardless of their position in society.”[14] Restrictions included bans on voting and intermarriage with white people. The category of mixed-race, or “mulatto,” included anyone with up to 1/8 Black ancestry.[15] All of the Brown family fell into that category.

While restrictions and social disapproval of mixed-race families were substantial in North Carolina, mixed-race families still enjoyed privileges that enslaved people did not, such as access to the courts for redress of injuries and the right to own property.[16] At least as far back as James Jr.’s grandfather William Brown, the Browns occupied land in rural Rowan County, east of the Yadkin River. No record of William buying land exists, but in 1798 his son James Sr. “entered” 300 acres of land on the Rocky Meadow Branch of Flat Swamp Creek, next to his brother-in-law Joseph Elliot’s 200 acres, which he entered on the same day. “Entering” land was a way to obtain title to vacant or unclaimed land that was legally state property. The fact that two of William Brown’s children entered land on the same day in 1778 suggests that this was the place where William and Margaret Brown had lived and raised their children.[17]

William apparently died around 1772, when his son James Sr. was still a teenager. The Revolutionary War began in 1776, and according to family history, James Sr. fought in the war.[18] As a private in the Revolutionary War, James Sr. would have been entitled to a warrant for 620 acres of land in North Carolina’s bounty lands, in what is today Tennessee.[19] Most veterans sold their bounty warrants. Because James Sr. continued to live in Rowan County, he was probably among those who sold their warrants, and the cash he recouped may have gone toward his 1778 purchase of 200 acres on Lick Creek, near where he grew up on Flat Swamp Creek.[20]

Around 1787, James Sr. married Mary Williams Emberson, also from Rowan County.[21] There is no documentation of their marriage; it is possible that they had a common-law union. No evidence suggests that Mary was Black or mixed race. James was approximately 1/4 Black, probably recognizably so given family recollections of his “dark complexion.” North Carolina law prohibited intermarriage between white people and mixed-race people, so the marriage of James Sr. and Mary provides an interesting view of how and why people may have skirted the law. Mary Williams Emberson was a woman with a complicated past. She was the widow of James Emberson, a Revolutionary War soldier who deserted and was later captured and killed by an American military patrol, leaving Mary a widow with a baby girl.[22] In the years after her husband’s death, she gave birth to an illegitimate son.[23] Mary’s social status likely would have suffered from the shame of both her husband’s desertion and her illegitimate child. Indeed, the fact that the father of that child did not marry her suggests as much. The marginal status of both Mary and James may have facilitated their marriage. Historian A. B. Wilkinson explains that “while intermarriage was rare between Europeans and people of mixed ancestry, these unions occurred more often among men and women in the lower social orders, who were less disgraced by these relationships than the upper classes.”[24] Mary was already in disgrace and certainly in need of support for herself and her two small children. James Sr. was firmly in the “lower social orders” because of his mixed-race status and his economic circumstances, which, according to his grandson, were “only modest.”[25]

James Sr. and Mary’s first child, Jane, was born in 1788. Eight more children followed closely after Jane’s birth: Mary (Polly) in 1789, Nancy in 1791, Susan in 1793, Martha (Patsy) in 1794, William (or Williams) in 1796, Obedience in 1799, James Jr. in 1801, and Daniel in 1804.

In 1787 James Sr. and Mary joined the Baptist Church, a decision that family members recalled as transformative. Grandson James S. Brown claimed that James Sr. was “a Smart But Rood [uneducated] man. and continud So: for a bout 30 years at which time he Atatched him self with his wife to the Unided Baptis church After which he be came very pious and morel and lived so to the day of his deth.”[26] The Browns attended Jersey Baptist Church until at least 1800,[27] later joining Tom’s Creek Baptist Church.[28] Baptists were known for teaching the spiritual equality of all persons, bond or free, and both Tom’s Creek and Jersey Baptist Churches included free and enslaved Black people among their congregants.[29]

During the last years of James Sr.’s life he was involved in the court case that was the source of the testimony quoted above, showing that the neighbors of the Brown family considered them to be “colored” and “of mixed race.” In that case, which took place in Randolph County immediately east of Rowan County, James Sr. sued to receive a portion of the estate of Thomas Stillwell, Jr., the son of Margaret (Peggy) Brown Stillwell, James Sr.’s older sister. James Sr. and several Stillwell relatives entered their petition in the fall of 1821. While James Sr. was the James Brown named in the petition, his son James Jr. seems to have acted in his father’s behalf.[30] The defendants, including Thomas Stillwell’s widow Eleanor Stillwell Roberts, denied James Sr. was related to Margaret Stillwell, declaring that “since the Bill in this Case has been filed they have endeavored to ascertain whether the mother of the said Thomas Stillwell deceased, was related to the said James Brown.” Through “inquiry of old & respected persons, now living in Davidson [formerly Rowan] County,” the defendants determined that Margaret Brown Stillwell could not have been James Sr.’s sister, because she was known “to be a woman of fair complexion & never suspected by her neighbors in Johnson County to be mixed blooded.” On the other hand, James Brown Sr., his father and mother, and his siblings “all … were colored persons; & from their appearance & complexion, afforded evidence to every body, that they were of mixed blood.”[31]

The defendants’ inquiries in the Browns’ neighborhood may have convinced James Sr. and James Jr. that there was little chance of winning their lawsuit. By April 1823, they sold their right to any profit obtained in the lawsuit to Seth Wade of Randolph County. In a manner reminiscent of Dickens’s Bleak House, Wade was still unsuccessfully pursuing the case in 1824 when he “died intestate and insolvent in the County of Randolph aforesaid, where he resided.”[32]

James Sr. died around October 1823, leaving no will, and his son James Jr. served as executor of his estate.[33] Mary Williams Brown seems to have died shortly thereafter, but there is no documentary record of her death.

James Sr. and Mary’s religiosity undoubtedly influenced their children. Their oldest son William later became a Baptist minister in Johnston County, North Carolina.[34] Their daughter Nancy and son James Jr. joined Tom’s Creek Baptist Church and attended alongside their parents, and when James Jr. married in March 1823, it was to Martha Stephens, whose parents were both members of the Tom’s Creek church. In 1831 James Jr. served as clerk to the congregation. In 1832-33, when Tom’s Creek split over the issue of whether to support the Baptist missionary movement, James Jr. was firmly on the pro-missionary side. When a large group of anti-missionary members broke away to form the New Tom’s Creek Baptist Church, James Jr. and a small number of like-minded congregants retained the church records and the meeting house and renamed it Missionary Baptist Church. Shortly after this split in April 1833, church records reported that “James Brown being a Bout to moave a letter of dismision was granted him."[35]

James Jr.’s move away from North Carolina was the tail end of a nearly mass exodus of the Brown family from the state. The first to leave was James Jr.’s brother Daniel in 1831. The youngest child in the Brown family, Daniel was living at home when his father died in 1823, and he continued living there afterwards. He married Elizabeth Stephens, the sister of James Jr.’s wife Martha, just three months after James Sr.’s death, and they started their family in the old homestead. Their sojourn there was marred by two fires that completely destroyed their home “with all the contents theirof.” The first fire was in 1824 and the second in 1831, “at which time [Daniel] resolved to try his luck in some other country.”[36]

Two fires in seven years is very bad luck, even eyebrow-raising. It is possible that Daniel was a victim of arson, although there is no evidence to support that possibility. There is, however, evidence that life in North Carolina was becoming less welcoming for mixed-race people in the years leading up to Daniel’s move. During the antebellum years, pro-slavery activists increasingly saw free Black people as a threat to the preservation of the slave power and began agitating to have them removed from the state. Laws against manumission were tightened, and an 1830 law ordered all newly freed persons to leave the state within 90 days.[37] Historian A. B. Wilkinson noted that “Virginia, Maryland, and eventually North Carolina devised the greatest systematic opposition to intermixture and became the most difficult places for mixed-heritage people to live in the colonial Americas.”[38] The Randolph County court case, particularly the efforts of the defendants in the case to interview “old & respected” members of the community to prove that the Browns were mixed race, may have stirred up local antipathy toward the family.

Daniel himself did not attribute his “bad luck” to racial persecution; he never acknowledged being mixed-race and seems, in fact, to have deliberately distanced himself from relatives who were easily identifiable as part-Black. In an 1849 interview with his son, Daniel implausibly claimed to have no knowledge of any ancestors before his own father, avowing “their was no record: of their progeneters kept, So we canot go any futher Back than them.” Instead of naming his grandparents, Daniel made the general claim that his father “was of Portigee and English Decent.”[39] “Portigee” (Portuguese) was a term frequently employed by mixed-race people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to claim Iberian European ancestry “and therefore escape the harsh social and legal sanctions faced by African-Americans.”[40]

By leaving North Carolina to begin anew in the West, the Browns could leave their racial identity—and the increasing prejudices and restrictions associated with it—behind them. All of Daniel’s and James Jr.’s children were younger than 10 years old when the Browns left North Carolina, and there is no evidence that any of them knew of the family’s mixed-race status. “Passing” as white was a common strategy of mixed-race people, one that made sense in an antebellum world that was beginning to apply rigid lines of separation between people based on pseudo-scientific race science. A. B. Wilkinson explained:

Deciding to temporarily or permanently pass was an option available to some individuals of mixed ancestry, but only certain family members could travel across somewhat flexible racial divides as they blurred lines of identity over multiple generations. These mixed-heritage people moved into colonial European communities, started families after they settled into a new area, and might have avoided talking about their ancestral origins to their children. Their neighbors might tacitly understand the family was “colored,” or they might not be racialized at all. These families on the racial middle ground met varying levels of prejudice, but they also socialized with other Europeans and married into these communities. After further intermixture with Europeans, their descendants might not even know that they were anything but “white.” In terms of building successful lives, it is understandable that these people might only relate with their European ancestry. The identities they crafted were no less valid than those of the people who were more closely affiliated with the dark side of the so-called color line.[41]

Leaving North Carolina was not just a Brown family decision. Tens of thousands of North Carolinians made the same choice in the 1830s, heading west for better opportunities. North Carolina’s economy was moribund, a result of weak government that had not supplied the infrastructure needed to make trade flourish in a state with significant natural barriers to transportation. Resistance to taxation made the government’s job harder and accounts for the lack of any public education or new roads.[42] Between 1815 and 1850 one-third of North Carolina’s population moved out of the state, including “many free people of color.”[43]

When Daniel departed for the West, he took with him his wife and children, his two unmarried sisters Nancy and Polly Brown, his nephew Homer Jackson, and two single brothers-in-law, Alexander and John Stephens.[44] After settling in Illinois, Daniel wrote home urging his remaining siblings and in-laws to join him. Over the next few years, his brother James Jr. and his family, his sisters Patsy Brown Boss and Obedience Brown Boss and their immediate and extended families, and several additional members of his wife Elizabeths Stephens’s family also moved to Illinois.

James Jr. and Martha and their children arrived in Illinois in 1833, settling first in Versailles township, Brown County, where, according to grandson Moroni F. Brown, James Jr. became a prosperous farmer and served as Justice of the Peace. The family moved west to Beverly township, Adams County by 1837. Soon after their move, Adams County became a place of refuge for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expelled from Missouri, and in June or July of 1839 missionaries from the Church preached near James Jr.’s home. Speaking to the missionaries afterwards, James Jr. reportedly said, "Gentlemen, if that is the doctrine which the Mormons believe in and teach, I want you to come and preach in my house." Two weeks later, after hosting the missionaries at their home, James Jr. and Martha were baptized. Within another two years, most of their Brown and Stephens relatives living in Illinois were also baptized into the Church.[45]James Jr. received priesthood ordination as an elder on October 7, 1839, just three months after his July 1839 baptism. 

James Jr.’s wife Martha died Sept. 28, 1840, three days after the birth of her ninth child, Moroni. Three months later James Jr. married Susan Foutz, the daughter of the missionary who baptized him. He was widowed again and married a third time before entering polygamy in 1846, eventually having 13 women sealed to him.[46]

In July 1841 James Jr. was ordained a high priest in Nauvoo, Illinois, and then set apart as bishop of the Versailles Branch in Brown County, Illinois.[47] He received his temple initiatory and endowment ordinances in Nauvoo December 22, 1845, before the Saints departed for the West.[48]

The main events of James Brown Jr.’s life after joining the Church have been recounted in multiple publications, so a brief summary will suffice here. James Brown Jr. remained a staunch defender of the Church for the remainder of his life. He and two sons volunteered to join the Mormon Battalion in 1846, with James Jr. serving as Captain over Company C, the sick detachment that wintered in Pueblo, Colorado, and arrived in Great Salt Lake Valley just days after Brigham Young’s party. At Young’s direction, James Jr. traveled to San Francisco to collect the pay for the Mormon Battalion soldiers and brought it back to Salt Lake. Using $1950 of the pay, he purchased trapper Miles Goodyear’s homestead and land in the Weber River Valley and founded “Brown’s Settlement,” or Brownsville, which would later become the city of Ogden. James Jr. was reportedly generous to this new community, distributing all but 200 acres of the Goodyear purchase to fellow settlers without charge, coming to the aid of several families in financial distress, and sending wheat flour, beef, and cheese to starving Salt Lake City residents at prices far below going rates.[49]

While James Jr. was the founder and political leader of Brownsville and bishop over the Weber River Ward, Brigham Young moved him aside in 1850, sending Lorin Farr to replace him as ecclesiastical and political leader of the settlement. Young seemed to have lost confidence in James Jr.’s leadership, perhaps because of receiving several letters charging him with highhanded behavior and financial misdealing.[50] James Jr. was known to be “fiery tempered,” which may also have contributed to Young’s decision to replace him. Lorin Farr would serve as mayor of Ogden and president of the Weber Stake from the 1850s through the 1870s.[51]Despite James Jr.’s displacement, he remained active in church and political affairs, becoming a counselor to the bishop of Ogden’s First Ward and a councilman, surveyor, assessor, and judge in Ogden City. Interestingly, James Jr. also represented Weber County for two terms of the Utah territorial legislature, including the 1852 session in which laws on slavery and servitude were passed and Governor Brigham Young announced the ban on priesthood and temple rites for men and women with African ancestry. James Jr. was uncharacteristically silent during the debates on those laws.[52]

James Brown Jr. served missions to Alabama and Mississippi in 1843 and British Guiana in 1852, acted as emigration agent for the Church in New Orleans in 1853-54, and captain of a company of emigrating saints in 1854. Returning from Church service to his family in Ogden, James Jr. cultivated his farm and ran a molasses mill. In 1863, while operating that mill, his sleeve caught in the cogs, and before he could free himself, his arm was mangled up to his shoulder. Infection set in, and on Sept. 30, his 63rd birthday, James Brown Jr. died, leaving seven wives and fifteen children at home.[53]

                                                                                                                                        * * *

While James Jr.--and likely his siblings Polly, Nancy, Patsy, Obedience, and Daniel--knew of the Brown family’s mixed-race status, they consigned it to the past when they moved from North Carolina to Illinois. Their children and grandchildren do not appear to have known about their Black ancestry and, with one possible exception, did not experience any priesthood or temple restrictions.[54] Rumors of their mixed-race status may have occasionally surfaced. In addition to some of James Jr.’s own siblings, several other families from Davidson County, North Carolina, settled near the Browns in Ogden, including Garner, Hendricks, and Stephens families. Some of them may have known and spoken about local perceptions of the Browns as colored people. One Brown descendant reported hearing in the 1960s that neighbors would not allow their children to date his children because they had “negro blood.” This descendant had recent Native American ancestry, so he dismissed these suspicions as confusion about the source of the family’s darker skin tone.[55] Such dismissals became more problematic after DNA testing became widespread in the 21st century and more and more Brown descendants reported the puzzling appearance of African ethnic markers in their genetic reports. As mentioned above, genetic analysis of these reports traced the African markers to James Brown Jr. His siblings presumably shared his 1/8 African ancestry; genetic studies of their descendants would undoubtedly find African ethnic markers traceable back to them.

Like James Jr., several of his siblings, including Patsy Brown Boss, Obedience Brown Boss, Polly and Nancy Brown,[56] and Daniel Brown, also joined the Church, and all but Patsy received temple ordinances during their lifetimes. Posthumously, their remaining siblings and dozens of other family members received proxy temple ordinances, most between 1891 and 1912—generations before the priesthood/temple ban was lifted. Of James Jr.’s 28 children, 16 received temple ordinances in their lifetimes. A large number of his 209 grandchildren also received temple ordinances and priesthood ordinations during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. James Jr.’s sister Obedience had ten children, five endowed in their lifetimes, who produced 36 children; his brother Daniel likewise had five endowed children, who had 47 children. From 1839 to the present, descendants of James Jr., Obedience, and Daniel Brown have attended the temple and held the priesthood; thousands are practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today, a resounding demonstration that people with African ancestry have always fully participated in the ordinances and offices of the Church.

By Jenny Hale Pulsipher

[1] Sources for vital and ordinance information: James Brown Jr. brief autobiography, in Weber Ogden baptism record 1851, CR 100 591, box 1, folder 18, CHL; Gregory A. Boyd, JD, Family Maps of Brown County, Illinois (Norman, OK: Arphax Publishing Company, 2005), 133, 138-39; Susan Easton Black and George Donald Durrant, Latter-day Saints in Adams County, Illinois (1839-1846), ND, 199; Gregory A. Boyd, JD, Family Maps of Adams County, Illinois (Norman, OK: Arphax Publishing, 2007), 352, 358-59; Adams County, IL, 1841 Tax List, comp by Jean McCarl Kay, Lillian Harris Frye (Great River Genealogical Society, 1984), 44; 1820 US Census, Rowan County, NC; 1830 US Census, Davidson County, NC; 1840 US Census, Brown County, IL; 1850 and 1860 US Censuses, Ogden, Weber County, Utah Territory; Lisle G. Brown, comp., Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings: A Comprehensive Register of Persons Receiving LDS Temple Ordinances, 1841-1846 (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2006), 39; Genealogy recorded by James Stephens Brown, grandson of James Brown Sr. (James Brown Sr. > Daniel Brown > James Stephens Brown), James Stephens Brown Papers, Vault MS 69, Harold B. Lee Library, Special Collections, BYU, Provo, Utah; Moroni F. Brown, “Captain James Brown, Pioneer of Ogden,” in Archie Leon Brown and Charlene L. Hathaway, 141 Years of Mormon Heritage: Rawsons, Browns, Angells – Pioneers(Oakland, California, 1973); James Brown Jr. (KWJC-WKC), FamilySearch.org; see also James Brown, Church History Biographical Database, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

[2] Author’s interview with Joan and Albert Brown Clark, April 29, 2002.

[3] Legacy Tree Genealogists Report, 11 May 2020, in possession of author.

[4] While this article focuses on James Brown Jr., a number of his siblings also joined and have descendants in the LDS Church today, including his sisters Nancy, Polly (Mary), Patsy (Martha), and Obedience, and his younger brother Daniel Brown. (Nancy and Polly did not have children, and research remains to be done on the descendants of Patsy Brown and David Boss.)

[5] Thomas Stillwell Estate Papers, Randolph County Estates Records, 1781-1928, CR 081.508,134, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.

[6] John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995 [1943]), 35.

[7] William Brown will, Rowan County, Wills, 1743-1971, C. R. 085.801.14, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.

[8] Genealogy recorded by James Stephens Brown, grandson of James Brown Sr. (James Brown Sr. > Daniel Brown > James Stephens Brown), James Stephens Brown Papers, Vault MS 69, Harold B. Lee Library, Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

[9] Warren E. Milteer Jr., North Carolina's Free People of Color, 1715-1885 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), 16. Milteer also notes that “During the nineteenth century, free people of color most commonly supported their claims to freedom through their neighbors’ statements, which specified that their maternal ancestors were free women of color” (21).

[10] Thomas Stillwell Estate papers.

[11] James Fredrick Brown, Jr. and Frances Elizabeth Pead Family, “Captain James Brown,” submitted to DUP, Susan B. Cazier camp, Lincoln Company, Afton, Wyomin, by Rhea Brown Roberts 12 December 1933, in possession of author. This account claims James Jr.’s father was born in Maryland in 1758, then moved to Rowan County, North Carolina, with his family.

[12] Sharon Block, Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 2. See also Walter Johnson, “The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s,” The Journal of American History, vol. 87, no. 1 (June 2000), pp. 13-38; and Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), introduction.

[13] Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

[14] A. B. Wilkinson, Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom : Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), chapter 3.

[15] Wilkinson, 131.

[16] Milteer, 1-2.

[17] Entries 1460 and 1461, 31 August 1778, Dr. A.B. Pruitt, Abstracts of Land Entrys [sic], Rowan County, North Carolina, 1778 (Copyright 1987 by author). No record of Margaret Brown’s death exists. It is likely that she died around 1778, when her son and son-in-law took steps to legally secure the family land.

[18] James Fredrick Brown, Jr. and Frances Elizabeth Pead Family, “Captain James Brown.” There are a number of Revolutionary War pay vouchers for a James Brown in Rowan County, North Carolina; see North Carolina, Revolutionary Pay Vouchers, 1779-1782, FamilySearch.org.

[19] In 1783, the amounts of land due to each different rank of soldier were reduced according to term of service. Privates serving two years received 225 acres, those serving three years received 274 acres. (Piedmont Trails.com)

[20] Entry #1395, James Brown [Sr.], assignee of William Carson, who was assignee of Robert Carlile, 200 acres on waters of Lick Creek, grant #2287, entered 18 Nov. 1778, Book [8?] page [352?], "North Carolina, Land Grant Files, 1693," accessed 14 May 2020.

[21] In a brief autobiography written in 1851, James Jr. stated that both he and his wife Martha were born in Rowan County (Weber Ogden baptism record 1851, CR 100 591, box 1, folder 18, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah). James Sr. and Mary’s first child, Jane, was born in 1788, and both of them joined the Jersey Baptist Church in 1787, so they likely wed in 1787 (Jersey Baptist Meeting House Record Book, Davidson Co., North Carolina, 1784-1852, typescript, Rowan Public Library History & Genealogy Dept, Salisbury, North Carolina, pp. 7, 10).

[22] James Brown Sr. (9X1D-F37) FamilySearch.org, Marva Jean Brown note.

[23] Information on Margaret Williams Emberson and her children comes from an 1891 genealogy written by Moroni Brown, youngest son of Capt. James Brown and grandson of James Brown Sr. He recorded “Margaret Emberson Daughter of John and Polly [Mary] Emberson[,] John Comstock an illegitimate son of Polly Williams widow of John Emberson and afterwards wife of James Brown” (Brown & Stephens Records Kept by Moroni Brown, LDS FILM #928,328, Item 2, 1976).

[24] Wilkinson, 141.

[25] James Stephens Brown Papers.

[26] James Stephens Brown Papers.

[27] Jersey Baptist Meeting House Record Book, Davidson Co., North Carolina, 1784-1852, typescript, Rowan Public Library History & Genealogy Dept, Salisbury, North Carolina, pp. 7, 10.

[28] James Brown Sr. first appears in Tom’s Creek Baptist Church records in 1818, but he may have attended as early as 1808, when the church first began meeting; Tom’s Creek Baptist Church Record Book 1808-1847, Davidson County, N.C., Property of Denton, North Carolina Baptist Church, microfilm in Salisbury Library History Room, Salisbury, North Carolina.

[29] Monica Najar, Evangelizing the South: A Social History of Church and State in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 7; Jersey Baptist Meeting House Record Book, p. 12.

[30] William Wade, for Seth Wade, claimed that James Brown Sr. was “a very aged man, and that unless his Testimony be soon taken it will be lost to the Complainants.” Wade had not met James Sr., so the source of this description is unclear. James Sr. died in 1823, still in his sixties, but he may have been in decline by 1821 (Thomas Stillwell Estate Papers).

[31] Thomas Stillwell Estate Papers.

[32] Thomas Stillwell Estate Papers .

[33] The administration of James Brown Sr.’s estate was assigned to his son James Brown Jr. in October 1823 (North Carolina Estate Files, 1663-1979, database with images, FamilySearch.org (8 March 2021), James (Sr) Brown, 1823.

[34] Erold Clark Wiscomb research on Williams Brown, in possession of author, from files on brownhistory.org (defunct website).

[35] Tom’s Creek Baptist Church Record Book, 1808-1847.

[36] James Stephens Brown papers.

[37] Milteer, 4; Franklin.

[38] Wilkinson, chapter 1.

[39] Daniel Brown’s information was recorded by his son, James S. Brown, during a March 8, 1849, visit to Daniel “in his own hous” in Calhoun, Iowa (James Stephens Brown Papers).

[40] David Henige, quoted in Wayne Winkler, Walking Toward Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006), 27. “Portigee” and other terms, such as Red Bones, Turks, Marlboro Blues, Coratans or Cros, Greeks, Portuguese, Yellow Hammers, Clay Eaters, and Summerville Indians have been linked to groups of people known as “Melungeons” or “tri-racial isolates.” Of these groups, see Winkler, Walking Toward Sunset; and Tim Hashaw, Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle of Mixed America (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006). A. B. Wilkinson explained that “Mulattoes also historically claimed Spanish and Portuguese identities to avoid bondage in the British colonies. . . . In many ways, this is where perceptions of race mattered more than someone’s actual ancestry, for some people of mixed heritage knew that drawing on Iberian connections could secure freedom. Therefore, they crafted identities to their advantage in order to convince others that they deserved liberty and ‘white’ privilege” (117).

[41] Wilkinson, 120.

[42] “Becoming Carolinians,” Display at the North Carolina Museum of History, Spring 2023.

[43] Wilkinson, 5.

[44] James Stephens Brown Papers.

[45] Moroni F. Brown, “Captain James Brown, Pioneer of Ogden”; while Moroni F. Brown said James Jr. served as justice of the peace in Adams County, it was likely in adjoining Brown County, where a James Brown was elected Justice of the Peace in 1835, while James Jr. was still living there (W.R. Brink, Combined History of Schuyler and Brown Counties, Illinois[Philadelphia: W.R. Brink & Co., 1882], 113).

[46] For James Jr.’s thirteen marriages, see James Brown Jr. (KWJC-WKC) FamilySearch.org.

[47] Weber Ogden baptism record 1851.

[48] Temple ordinances include the initiatory, a preparatory ordinance in which participants are washed, anointed with oil, and have blessings pronounced on them; the endowment, in which participants learn about God’s plan for mankind and make covenants with him; and sealings, in which family members are eternally connected to spouses, children, and ancestors. For James Brown Jr.’s ordination as high priest, see “High Priests of Nauvoo and Early Salt Lake City,” M251.33 H6382, 37/294, CHL, p. 17. For his endowment and initiatory ordinances, see Nauvoo Temple Endowment Register, Special Collections Room, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; and Lisle G. Brown, comp., Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings: A Comprehensive Register of Persons Receiving LDS Temple Ordinances, 1841-1846 (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2006), 39.

[49] Orson Pratt Brown, Experiences Transcripts 1943, MSS 8602, HBLL Special Collections, BYU, Provo, UT, folder 2; William John Hill, WPA Pioneer biographical Sketches, Utah State Historical Society; Hunter, 67-69. Historians have debated, without conclusion, whether the money used to purchase the Goodyear property was taken from the pay of the entire Battalion or only from Brown Jr.’s personal pay and funds. Hunter recounts the conclusions of Edward W. Tullidge (History of Utah) and Dale Morgan (WPA, A History of Ogden) in Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak, 66-67.

[50] See G. W. Rosecrans to Brigham Young, 18 Oct. 1846, box 21, folder 2, Church History Library and 17 Feb. 1849, CR 1234, box 1, folder 21, Church History Library; Samuel Brannan to Brigham Young and High Council, 17 Oct. 1847, CR 1234, box 21, folder 5, Church History Library; and Sarah Noe to Brigham Young, 1 July 1849, CR 1234, box 1, folder 17, Church History Library. Early Ogden settler Hyrum Belnap, who had extensive conversations about the Goodyear purchase with James Jr.’s son William, claimed that James Jr. took his deed to show Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, and a few days later Young, Heber C. Kimball, and George A. Smith came to Ogden and began the process of laying out and renaming the future city. It is possible that Church leaders wanted to preempt any attempt of James Jr., whose name was on the deed, to claim the Weber Valley as his own. Belnap reported that in 1886 William Brown asked for help in securing title to the land, declaring “My father and his family were not treated right by Brigham Young” (Hyrum Belnap, interview with Maurice Howe, WPA pioneer narratives, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah). Other descendants also implied that James Jr. had a rightful claim to the land but framed the story to underline his faithfulness and generosity: “Captain Brown kept only two or three hundred acres for a farm and opened the remainder for colonization. Since Brigham Young had said: ’No man of the community should buy any land, every man should have his measured out to him for city and farming purposes’, Captain Brown welcomed all settlers to come and settle without money or price” (James Fredrick Brown Jr. and Frances Elizabeth Pead Family, “Captain James Brown.”)

[51] Hunter, 431-33, 473. Family members who commented on James Jr.’s temper included his plural wife Mary Black Brown (Mary Black Brown to Curtis Black, 21 Dec. 1846, CR 1234, 1, box 22, folder 21, Church History Library) and his son Orson Pratt Brown, who claimed his father “was a fiery tempered man but was over it in a flash when anything angered him” (Orson Pratt Brown, “Captain James Brown,” PDF in possession of author).

[52] See W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford University Press, 2025). References to James Brown’s service in the lower house of the legislature appear in Hosea Stout’s diary on 12, 14, and 29 January and 1 March (Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861 [University of Utah Press, 1964], 413-414, 420, 429); and in “Debate on Various Bills,” where Brown Jr. appears repeatedly (“Debate on various bills, 1852”: Church History Department Pitman Shorthand transcriptions, 2013-2024 / Addresses and sermons, 1851-1874 / Utah Territorial Legislature, 1852 January-February / Debate on various bills, 1852).

[53] On James Jr.’s missions, see Journal History, Church History Library, 24 April 1843 and 28 Aug. 1852; on his role as emigration agent, see James Brown to James Morehead Brown, 22 February 1854, Utah Humanities Foundation, University of Utah Special Collections; on his appointment as captain of a company of emigrating saints, see Journal History, 26 Aug. 1854, Church History Library; “A Sad Accident,” Deseret News, 7 Oct. 1863, 4; 1860 US Census, Ogden City. Several of Brown’s wives had died (Martha Stephens, Susan Foutz) or left him (Esther Jones Raper, Sarah Steadwell Wood, Abigail Smith Abbott, Cecilia Henrietta Cornu) by the time of his death.

[54] James Jr.’s son James Morehead Brown and his Shoshone wife Adelaide Exervia Brown, who were endowed and sealed in 1857, later had all of their temple ordinances cancelled without explanation, and with no evidence of any excommunication or wrongdoing by either of them. In 1865, both returned to the temple and received all of their ordinances again, apparently having resolved whatever issue or concern had led to the cancellation (Endowment Book C, Wednesday, 22 April 1857, pg. 18, no. 488; Endowment House Sealings to Spouse, both living, 1856-66, vols. C and D, pg. 182; Endowment House Records, Saturday, March 4, 1865, Book E, 1864-66, pg. 102, #8 and pg. 103, #27; Endowment House Sealings to Spouse, both living, 1856-66, Book D, p. 439, #7558, all at Family History Library, Special Collections Room.)

[55] Author’s interview with Joan and Albert Brown Clark, 29 April 2002.

[56] Nancy was admitted to the first Relief Society in Nauvoo on June 14, 1842, and received her endowment in Nauvoo on January 30, 1846 (Brown, comp., Nauvoo Sealings, 40). James Jr.’s sisters Polly (Mary) and Nancy Brown had no children. Patsy (Martha) and David Boss and their children moved to Contra Costa County, California in the 1860s, and further research needs to be done to determine whether they have Church members among their descendants.

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