Sonoma-El Dorado-Sacramento County CA Archives Biographies.....Brown, John 1844 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 3, 2006, 3:47 am

Author: Alley, Bowen & Co. (1880)

Brown, Major John, Of Santa Rosa, was born in Tennessee in the year 1827, and
remained there until the beginning of the year 1846. He then went into the
Mexican war with the Tennessee troops, and remained there until after the Treaty
of peace was made and ratified. He was in the battle of Monterey under General
Z. Taylor, and from there he went to Tampico in the command of Generals Pattens
and Pillow, where General Winfield Scott took command, General Taylor having
gone to Buena Vista. From Tampico he, in General Scott's command, embarked for
Vera Cruz, and was among the very first troops who went ashore on the sand beach
about four miles east of the city of Vera Cruz, under the cover of the United
States gun boats "Ohio" and others, and was in the siege of Vera Cruz sixteen
days, and saw the city and land fortresses bombarded from land by General
Scott's command for sixteen days and nights, when the city surrendered to the
land forces and the impregnable Fort San Wande Aloa struck her colors to the
United States gun-boats. During the siege he became acquainted with a great many
young officers, he being a Lieutenant himself, among others Lieutenant U. S.
Grant, Lieutenant George B. McClellan, and last but not least, Lieutenant
Beauregard and Captain Robert E. Lee, all of whom have since filled the highest
official positions in the army, and some of them civil departments in our
government. From Vera Cruz he went in General Scott's command to the city of
Mexico, and engaged in all the battles and skirmishes on the line of march, the
chief battle being Cerro Gordo, where he saw many of his comrades fall never to
rise on earth again. We would here say that the last year of the war he was
Acting Quartermaster and Commissary, and after the treaty of peace was signed
and ratified he left the city of Mexico among the very last of the American
troops, in charge of the Quartermaster and Commissary Department of the division
to which he was attached, and when he reached Vera Cruz, on his return out of
Mexico, he received two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in silver coin, which
he took across the Gulf of Mexico and there tried to turn it over to General
Jessup, the Commissary General of the United States, then at New Orleans, but
the General told him to take the money to Memphis, Tennessee, where the western
troops would be paid off. So he took it to Memphis and turned it over to Major
Reynolds, United States Paymaster. This was in the Fall of 1848. He then
returned home to East Tennessee, and remained a few days, and then went to
Washington, D. C, and settled his business as Commissary and Quartermaster. In
the early Spring of 1849 he crossed the plains and the Rocky Mountains to
California, and located at Ringgold, El Dorado county, near Weavertown and creek
of same name, and about two miles east of Placerville, and engaged in
merchandising with a man by the name of Houcks, from New York State. There he
paid seven hundred dollars per thousand feet for lumber sawed by hand, and built
a two story frame house adjoining the log store house, for a hotel, it being the
first house built of sawed lumber in the mines. This was all done in 1849. Then
flour was selling for a dollar per pound; sugar, coffee, rice, potatoes, and
everthing to eat for one dollar per pound. He was making money very fast. In
1850 the " Indian War " broke out all over California, and he was commissioned
by John McDougal, then Governor of California, as Commissary for the northern
division of California, and went into the Indian wars of 1850 and 1851, and he
says after the two years were over, and the smoke of battle was wafted away by
mountain breezes, so one could look over the ground, it was summed up that the
Indians had killed in his division of California about four white men, and the
army of white men had killed a few old squaws and papooses, and California was
thereby involved in a debt of millions of dollars, every cent of which was paid
with interest by the people of California. He was a whig then, and in 1850 was
nominated by a few whigs for the office of County Clerk of El Dorado county, and
made the race and was beaten three votes by Major McKinney, the Democratic
candidate from Georgetown. His name was on the ticket with the name of Milton S.
Latham of Sacramento, the Democratic candidate for District Attorney, El Dorado
county being then in the same district with Sacramento, and every Democrat being
elected, he was beaten three votes and his friend Latham was elected. He says
that the people who came to California in 1849 and 1850 were generally honest:
they all came for the same purpose—that was to dig a fortune out of the mines
and go back home. The people who came then could not think that California was
the agricultural country that it has been proven to be. They did not want laws
here, and would not have taken them as a gift at that time. He knew the most of
those who came here when he did, and voted for delegates to a constitutional
convention to frame a constitution for California, and then voted for the
adoption of the old constitution, and then he voted for the adoption of the new
constitution; he also voted for the amendment to the constitution and against
repudiation. After he left El Dorado county, in 1852, he went to Sacramento and
went into the hotel business, and was Sergeant of the police force, and feeding
the prisoners on the prison brig. The fire of 1854 burnt his hotel and contents,
and in the Winter of 1855 he came to Sonoma county, and in March 1856 he came to
Santa Rosa, and has not been away since. He has held some public office ever
since he has been in Sonoma county. Was Deputy County Clerk and Recorder from
the sixth day of March 1856, for two years, and was Notary Public for eight
years thereafter, and has been elected and held the office of Justice of the
Peace for sixteen years last past, and now holds it. He is by profession a
lawyer, and been in practice in Santa Rosa over twenty-one years. Was married to
a daughter of General Murray Whallon of Sonoma, in 1866, and has four children;
is the President of the Society of the Mexican War Veterans, of this district
and has been for three years; he is a member of the Pioneer Association of
California; has been in California over thirty years, and in Santa Rosa
twenty-four years; has not been off the Pacific coast since he came to it, but
has been down the coast to Central and South America, to see the countries; was
gone about five months. He has been all over California, in most of the Eastern
States, all over Mexico, through Central America and a large portion of South
America, and thinks, after all, that Sonoma county, considering the climate,
scenery, water, soil and sure crops every year, is the garden spot of all the
countries and localities he has seen, and the "city of roses" (Santa Rosa) is
the very center of the garden.

Additional Comments:
Santa Rosa Township

Extracted from:

HISTORY
—OF-
SONOMA COUNTY,
-INCLUDING ITS—
Geology, Topooraphy, Mountains, Valleys and Streams;
—TOGETHER WITH—
A Full and Particular Record of the Spanish Grants; Its Early History and
Settlement, Compiled from the Most Authentic Sources; the Names of Original
Spanish and American Pioneers; a full Political History, Comprising the Tabular
Statements of Elections and Office-holders since the Formation of the County;
Separate Histories of each Township, Showing the Advancement of Grape and Grain
 Growing Interests, and Pisciculture;
ALSO, INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE; THE RAISING OF THE BEAR FLAG; AND BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCHES OF EARLY AND PROMINENT SETTLERS AND REPRESENTATIVE MEN;
—AND OF ITS—
Cities, Towns, Churches, Schools, Secret Societies, Etc., Etc.
ILLUSTRATED.
SAN FRANCISCO:
ALLEY, BOWEN & CO., PUBLISHERS.
1880.


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