Denver County CO Archives Biographies.....Brown, Junius Flagg 1827 - 1908
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Author: Wilbur Fiske Stone (1918)

JUNIUS FLAGG BROWN.

    Junius Flagg Brown, whose business interests of a varied nature, covering
the wholesale grocery trade, cattle raising and railroad building, brought him
prominently before the public and made him a contributing factor to the
upbuilding and development of the state, was born in Conneaut. Ashtabula county,
Ohio. September 3, 1827, and was nearing the eighty-first milestone on life's
journey when he passed away in Denver, August 9, 1908. His parents were Reuben
and Betsy Horton (Hill) Brown, the former a descendant of Henry Brown, who
emigrated from England about 1639 and established his home in Salisbury.
Massachusetts. One of his descendants in the fifth generation was Moses Brown,
who was born in East Kingston, New Hampshire, in 1750 and served as a soldier of
the Revolutionary war. He wedded Mary Hobbs, of Poplin, New Hampshire, and
afterward removed to Strafford, Orange county, Vermont, where their son, Reuben
Brown, was born in 1797. In early life the latter became a resident of Conneaut,
Ohio, and there engaged in farming. He married Betsy Horton Hill, a daughter of
John and Laura (Bushnell) Hill and a native of Starksboro, Vermont. She was a
sister of General Charles W. Hill, adjutant-general of Ohio during the
administration of Governor Todd and active in raising and putting into the field
Ohio's quota in the Civil war. Mrs. Betsy Brown died in Denver in 1889, at the
age of eighty-seven years. She was descended from General Robert Sedgwick, who
was born in England in 1600 and on the 3d of June, 1636, became a resident of
Charlestown, Massachusetts. During an early period in English history his
ancestors resided in the mountain districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire and
Westmoreland and suffered during the War of Roses, in the struggles between the
houses of York and Lancaster.

    Junius F. Brown was the eldest of a family of five children, the others
being: Mrs. Adelia Dayfoot, who died in Canada; Mrs. Hannah Gillett; John
Sidney; and Charles H., who died in Denver. His youthful days were spent upon
the old homestead farm in his native township and his public school training was
supplemented by an academic course. He started in the business world in 1850 as
a clerk in one of the mercantile establishments of Conneaut and after two years
secured a clerkship in a dry goods house at Toledo, Ohio. His early training
gained him the experience which constituted the foundation upon which he built
his later success. He afterward entered railroad service and spent a year in the
employ of the Lake Shore road and a similar period with the Lake Shore &
Michigan Southern Railroad. He was next employed in commission houses in both
the east and the west and in 1857 became a resident of Atchison, Kansas, where
he took up the manufacture of lumber for the early settlers, having sawmills on
the Missouri side of the river. With the outbreak of the Civil war he disposed
of his business interests in Missouri and, his teams being thus rendered idle,
he sent a train of merchandise to Denver in charge of his brother, J. Sidney
Brown. Junius F. Brown then continued to supervise his business interests at
Atchison. Kansas, and was engaged in freighting until 1865, when he became one
of the organizers of the wholesale grocery house of Drury & Brown at Atchison.
He remained in business there until 1870, when he came to Denver and joined his
brother. J. Sidney Brown, in the conduct of a wholesale grocery house under the
firm style of J. S. Brown & Brother. They developed one of the largest
establishments of the kind in the west. Prom their first location on Blake
street, near Fifteenth, they removed to Wazee and Eighteenth in 1876 and in 1893
they incorporated their interests under the name of the J. S. Brown & Brother
Mercantile Company, of which J. Sidney Brown became the president and Junius P.
Brown vice president, with H. R. Brown as secretary, P. S. Brown as treasurer
and F. A. Hall as general manager. Broadening the scope of their interests, they
built the first roller flouring mill and elevator in Colorado, on the site of
the Crescent mill, and afterward entered the field of banking. becoming active
in the organization of the Bank of San Juan at Del Norte, Colorado. They
likewise promoted banks at Alamosa and Durango and then entered upon still
another field by taking part in the organization of the Denver Tramway Company.
In 1882 they engaged in the stock business under the style of the Brown-Iliff
Cattle Company, having a large ranch at Snyder, Colorado, while their herds
ranged on the open prairies between the South Platte and Wyoming. Of the cattle
company J. P. Brown was the president. For fifteen years prior to 1893 he had
been vice president of the City National Bank of Denver. His cooperation was
largely sought in connection with the establishment and conduct of important
business and corporate interests. He was one of those who were instrumental in
the building of the South Park Railroad and was one of the first stockholders of
the Denver. Texas & Fort Worth Railroad. He also became an incorporator of the
Denver Tramway Company and for many years he was president of the Riverside
Cemetery Association. He was a man of wide vision and keen business sagacity to
whom opportunity was ever the call to action-a call to which he responded
readily, his efforts winning substantial results.

    For forty years the partnership between the brothers, J. Sidney and Junius
F. Brown, existed most harmoniously. In 1900 the latter withdrew from the firm
to organize the J. F. Brown Investment Company and admitted his son. H. K.
Brown, and his son-in-law, F. S. Titsworth, to a partnership. He came into
control of mammoth enterprises, yet there were no spectacular phases in his
career, which was marked by a steady progression, each forward step bringing him
a broader outlook and wider opportunity. Business was to him not merely a source
for the attainment of wealth. He enjoyed the game. He found pleasure in solving
its intricate problems, in shaping its possibilities and in achieving its
triumphs. Moreover, the methods which he followed were ever of a constructive
nature and his path was never strewn with the wreck of other men's failures.

    Mr. Brown was married twice. In 1859, at Conneaut, Ohio, he wedded Miss Jane
B. Kilborn, a native of Canada and a daughter of John B. Kilborn, of Conneaut.
She passed away in 1877, leaving three children: Helen, who became the wife of
James W. Douglas; Jane M., the wife of F. S. Titsworth; and Harry K., a Yale
graduate of 1892 and now president of the J. F. Brown Investment Company. On the
28th of November, 1878, at Denver, Mr. Brown wedded Mary L. Brundage, a daughter
of Marcus B. Brundage, a native of Poughkeepsie, New York, who removed westward
with his family to Colorado and afterward to California, where he passed away in
1883. His wife bore the maiden name of Harriet Parmelee, a daughter of Theodore
Hudson Parmelee, a descendant of one of the Revolutionary war patriots, while
the ancestral line is traced back in England to 1639, when a representative of
the name founded the family in the new world. Of the second marriage of Mr.
Brown was born a daughter, June Louise, who in 1912 was married to J. J. B.
Benedict, a well known architect. Marcus B. Brundage was the youngest of twelve
children and was left an orphan when but fourteen years of age. After completing
his education he went to New Haven, Connecticut, where he engaged in carriage
manufacturing and subsequently removed to Tallmadge, Ohio, where he conducted
business along the same line. Failing health brought him to Colorado and
subsequently led to his removal to the Pacific coast, where his death occurred.
His wife died in Ohio at the age of seventy-five years, leaving four children,
including Mrs. Brown.

    Mr. Brown was the organizer of the Gentlemen's Driving Club of Denver, which
indicated his love of a good horse, and he found much pleasure in driving. His
love of the beautiful was manifest in his establishment of a fine art gallery.
When seventy years of age he began to collect valuable paintings and at his
demise his gallery was one of the best in the country among the smaller
collections and ranked the first of Colorado. This collection of paintings is
preserved just as he left it and the heirs have agreed to present it in its
entirety to the city of Denver when a suitable building is erected for the
purpose within a specified time. Mr. Brown's selection of paintings was the
result of his love of the subject and of the art. He particularly enjoyed the
pastoral type and he gathered many beautiful specimens. At length he built his
beautiful art gallery to his own satisfaction and shortly before his death he
announced that the canvases were hung as best befitted them and in a manner most
pleasing to the eye, bringing out as well the special qualities of the
individual pictures. Among his paintings is to be found an original Millet, also
a Corot and a Diaz, of the Barbazon school; while others include the best
examples of the American, Dutch and French schools of art. He was a great
admirer of the works of American artists especially that of Homer Martin, while
that of Innes as well as that of Wyant were highly regarded by him. He was
versatile in his selection but cared not for the impressionistic or other
ultra-modern schools of art, the canvases that presented simplicity, beauty and
peacefulness having strongest appeal for him., It is well that so successful a
life should also have found time for the finer things our self-made men are so
prone to overlook-aid in money and personal attention to schools and churches,
collection of rare objects of beauty from all over the world and the artistic
adornment of his city and of his home.


Additional Comments:


Extracted from:

HISTORY OF COLORADO

ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME III

CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1918


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