BIOGRAPHY: John M. Browning; Ogden, Weber co., Utah

Transcribed by W. David Samuelsen for The USGenWeb Archives Project
************************************************************************
The USGenWeb Archives Project notice
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm

http://www.usgwarchives.net/ut/utfiles.htm
***********************************************************************
History of Utah
The Storied Domain
A Documentary History of Utah's Eventual Career
by J. Cecil Alter
Vol. 2, published 1932 (expired copyright)
The American Historical Society, Inc.


JOHN M. BROWNING, "the greatest gun wizard of the modern age," was a
cosmopolite in the sense that he crossed the ocean sixty-one times and had
business establishments in foreign countries and was known personally or by
his achievements to all the potentates of the civilized world, yet in another
sense was one of the quietest and most modest of men, and in home loyalty was
attached to the city and place of his birth, Ogden, Utah. In the field of
invention no one man did more to make the name of this city and state known
over the world than John M. Browning.

He was born at Ogden January 21, 1855. As one of his biographers said: He was
"essentially a home loving man. When he was not marketing his patients in the
East or running off to Europe, he was always to be found at home with his
family or busy in his little workship. His close contact with the great arms
experts and military authorities of the world made him a muchsought man, and
this embarrassed him greatly. He hated to be introduced as an expert or
anything."

Four years before his birth his father, Jonathan Browning, had come to Utah.
Jonathan Browning was the first of the greøt Browning gun-makers. This
American family of Browning runs back to its ancestor in Capt. John Browning,
who was born in England in 1588 and was captain of a ship which crossed the
Atlantic in 1622, first landing on the New England Coast and later going to
Virginia. Jonathan Browning was born at Sumner, Tennessee, October 22, 1805.
Jonathan Browning learned his trade of gunsmith in Kentucky, and while he
learned to appreciate the qualities of the famous Kentucky rifle he was still
in his teens when he set up a shop of his own and in 1831 designed and forged
by hand his first repeating rifle. The Browning Arms Company in 1931
celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the business on the basis of this
repeating rifle made by Jonathan Browning, the first of three successive
generations who have been gun-makers.

Later Jonathan Browning moved to the edge of the western frontier, settling in
Western Iowa, at Kanesville, at what later became Council Bluffs. Here he set
up a shop, repairing and making guns, many of them of original design, used by
the pioneers who went west over the Oregon trail and other trails to the
Pacific Coast. In an old newspaper published at Kanesville September 19, 1849,
Jonathan Browning advertised his facilities for the manufacture of improved
firearms, including "revolving rifles and pistols; also slide guns, from five
to twenty-five shooters," and in the advertisement showed the modesty which
has always been a trait of the family in the statement that these guns were
"he thinks not equalled this far east." But he added, "farther west there
might be," though in all probability then as later the Browning arm was
unsurpassed in simplicity and efficiency.

Jonathan Browning was an early convert to the Mormon faith and in 1851 he
captained a wagon train across the plains and the following year settled
permanently at Ogden, where he opened his gun shop and continued to make and
advertise his wares until his death on June 21, 1879. His wife died in 1890.
Of the two sons the elder was John M. Browning, who inherited the mechanical
and inventive genius of his father. Matthew Sandifer Browning carried the
burden of the business management of the great establishment that grew up to
manufacture the produce of his brother's genius, the Browning Arms Company, of
which M. S. Browning was the first vice president. M. S. Browning was born at
Ogden October 27, 1859, and died in that city in June, 1923. He married Mary
Ann Adams and they had a family of five children.

John M. Browning was born in the little home attached to his father's work
shop, and the home of his later years stood on the site of that pioneer shop.
He had only the advantages of the common schools and started work under his
father at the age of thirteen, and before he was fifteen had designed rifles
that met the approval of his father. At the age of twenty-four he sold his
first patent, a model which afterwards won fame as the famous Winchester
single shot rifle in several calibers. This model it is said established his
reputation and was the first fruit of a genius which produced many of the
famous guns subsequently manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms
Company. A dozen or more models and designs of rifles and shotguns
manufactured by the Winchester, Remington and other arms companies illustrated
the peculiar genius of this great gun-maker. For many years the Winchester
Company took everything he offered, paying at times huge sums for a single
patent. To quote his biographer again:

"Browning turned out his inventions with great rapidity and apparent ease. His
remarkable familiarity with every detail of firearms construction enabled him
to work out many patents in his mind completely, before he transferred them to
scale drawings, which, however, he inevitably did. For Browning was a
blueprint man. He loved to make his own plans and then work from them."

The Browning rifles invented by him during the `80s and `90s continued to be
used by various governments as the military arms down to as late a time as the
World war. In the late `90s he turned his attention to the development of a
practical automatic pistol. The thirty-two caliber model, which was
manufactured at the Belgium plant, broke all records in the production of
small arms. Over a million in one caliber without a change of any kind had
been made up to 1914. On the completion of the millionth pistol, the King of
Belgium conferred the Order of Leopold upon Mr. Browning. About 1900 he
invented the first automatic shotgun, and this in its successive improvements
and models represents the finest implement ever put into the hands of a
sportsman. In the course of the past half century millions of men have used
the Browning rifles, pistols and shotguns, though Mr. Browning's practice of
permitting manufacturers to use their own names on arms made under license
from him disguised the fact that he was the inventor.

Millions of soldiers over the world have used not only the Browning small
arms, but also those products especially designed and made for military
purposes, including the Browning automatic rifle, and the various types of the
Browning machine guns. After the World war Mr. Browning added to his list of
inventions an anti-aircraft machine gun and also one for special airplane use.
He was well called "the Edison of Guns," and to the end of his life he
continued working, with patents pending at Washington and in foreign
governments, and death overtook him when he was putting on the final touches
to an installation for the manufacture of a new shotgun at his Belgium plant.

It was his genius and his work that brought fame to his door, and probably no
really great man ever showed less inclination toward publicity. His habits
made it possible for him to shun public attention, because by the very
concentration of his effort and intense absorption in his work he could be
completely oblivious to every one around him. One of many delightful stories
told of him concerns the visit of a manufacturer of international reputation
to his shop. This visitor after a time came back and reported that he was
unable to find Mr. Browning and that "only one man is up there, and he is a
deaf mechanic or janitor in overalls, and won't say a word."

For all this intensity he had a wide range of interests. He loved music and
was a great believer in the out-of-doors, being an indefatigable walker. He
was also an ardent duck hunter and fisherman, and was very proficient in trap
shooting. During the World war at the request of the United States Government
he supervised the management of five large factories in the East, with
headquarters at Hartford, Connecticut. He was presented with the John Scott
Legacy Medal by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. He was born and died a
Mormon and was always a true and faithful Latter Day Saint, and in business as
well as in religion he led a most exemplary life. He died November 26, 1926.

John M. Browning married Rachel Child, who was born at Ogden, September 9,
1861, daughter of Warren G. and Hanna (Wilder) Child, who came to Ogden from
New York. The children of their marriage were: John, born January 22, 1880;
Louie, born August 3, 1885; Carrie, born December 12, 1887; Elsie, born
February 1, 1890; Monida, born June 21, 1892; Val Allen, born in 1895; Kenneth
S., born in 1897 and died in April, 1931; and Elizabeth, born in 1902. All the
children were born at Ogden. Val A. Browning, representing the third
generation of this family of gun-makers, was for a number of years his
father's technical assistant, and during the past ten years has lived in
Belgium, in charge of the factory interests of the Browning Arms Company.