Joseph R. Brown

After enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1820, he was assigned to the Fifth Infantry Regiment, which had been sent to the upper Mississippi River area in order to build a military post at the river's confluence with what is now known as the Minnesota River.  The post--Fort St. Anthony--was later renamed Fort Snelling.  After leaving the army in 1828, Brown remained in the area, and in the ensuing years he was at various times a fur trader farmer; lumberman; stagecoach line owner; justice of the peace, clerk of court, and register of deeds; printer; newspaper editor, owner, and publisher; and U.S. Indian agent in Minnesota (1857-61). 

 

Actively involved in politics, he served in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, as a delegate to the conventions that organized Minnesota Territory and drafted the state's constitution, and in the Minnesota Territorial Council and Legislature. He was also an avid promoter of a steam-powered traction engine which he purchased from a New York engineer.  Brown was associated with the development of several Minnesota communities, including the town of Henderson.

In 1850, the twice-divorced Brown married Susan Frenier, whose forebears included a French fur trader, a Mdewakanton Dakota chief, and a Yankton Dakota chief.

 

During the U.S.-Dakota War, while he was away from Minnesota on business related to the steam wagon, Brown's house near what is now the town of Sacred Heart was burned and his family captured. They were later released. Following his return to Minnesota he served as superintendent of the Indian prison at Mankato, participated in the military campaigns against the Dakota, and was special military agent at Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory.  He died in New York City in 1870, while on a business trip in connection with the steam wagon. 

 

For more information, see: Nancy Goodman and Robert Goodman, Joseph R. Brown: Adventurer on the Minnesota Frontier, 1820-1849, Rochester, MN: Lone Oak Press, 1996