Nicholas Brown
Nicholas Brown was best known as a philanthropist. Born in Providence Rhode Island on April 4th 1769, he was the son of Nicholas Brown and Rhoda (Jenckes) Brown, and grandson of James Brown and Hope (Power) Brown, great grandson of James Brown and Mary (Harris) Brown, and great-great-grandson of John Brown the eldest son of Chad Brown.
Nicholas Brown matriculated in Rhode Island college when only fourteen years old, and was graduated in 1786. He left college for his father’s counting-room, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of business methods. When only twenty-two years of age he inherited a considerable fortune by his father’s death. He formed a partnership with Thomas P. Ives, his brother-in-law, and the firm of Brown & Ives had a long career of prosperity, although commerce was disturbed by the French revolution and the war of 1812.
Mr. Brown did not so confine himself to business interests as to neglect the duties to neighborhood and country. He was active in public affairs, and for fourteen years was a member of the Rhode Island legislature, and a delegate to the presidential convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvanion on December 4th 1839, where General Harrison was nominated.
Nicholas Brown was associated during his entire lifetime with the Baptist church, but was never a baptized member. He was generous, almost without stint, to all worthy religious enterprises. The church where his fathers had worshipped received from his hand an organ; held in those days to be of great value. Within a half-dozen years of his graduation, he began his benefactions to the college by the gift of a valuable law library. Not much later he established a professorship of rhetoric and oratory by the gift of five thousand dollars. His continued interest and generosity induced the corporation of the college to change its name in 1804 to Brown university.
Throughout his life he was its munificent patron. He built in 1822, at an expense of nearly $20,000, a second college building, and named it Hope college, in honor of his sister Hope, wife of Thomas P. Ives. Manning hall, in honor of Dr. Manning, was erected by him in 1835, and he gave generously towards the erection of Rhode Island hall and the residence for the president. It is estimated that at the very least he gave to the university in money and real estate $160,000. He was a trustee from 1791, its treasurer for twenty-nine years, and from 1825 a member of its board of fellows.
Nor did Mr. Borwn limit his benefactions to the university. He gave to the Newton theological institute, Massachusetts; to Waterville college, Maine; and to numerous needy churches. He was active in founding the Providence athenaeum, contributing four thousand dollars to the library fund, six thousand dollars toward the erection of the library building, and the land on which it stands. In his will he remembered the Northern Baptist educational society, and the American and foreign Bible societies, and gave $30,000 for a lunatic asylum in Providence.
Nicholas Brown died in Providence Rhode Island on September 27th 1841.