Brown, Samuel W. (IL State Representative)

Born: 1819-11-10 Meade County, Kentucky

Died: 1908-01-22 Vancouver, Washington

Flourished: Galesburg, Illinois

Samuel W. Brown, farmer and public official, was living in Illinois by the time of his 1847 marriage. He served as the superintendent of the Universalist Sunday school in Galesburg from its organization in 1855 until 1860. Brown represented Knox County in the Illinois House of Representatives, 1855 to 1856, was elected assistant supervisor of Galesburg in 1856 and was mayor of Galesburg in 1858. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed Brown receiver of public money for the sale of lands at Vancouver, Washington Territory. Brown married Harriet H. Miles in 1847 and the pair had two children who survived to adulthood. At the time of Brown’s election to the Illinois House of Representatives, Lincoln identified him as a Whig.

Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Warren County, 11 November 1847, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Knox County, IL, 39; Albert J. Perry, History of Knox County Illinois (Chicago, S. J. Clarke, 1912), 1:128, 709; John Clayton, The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 221; F. A. Willoughby and G. A. Lawrence, comps., Revised Ordinances of the City of Galesburg (Galesburg, IL: n.p., 1883), vii; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Galesburg, Knox County, IL, 334; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 11:325, 342; List of Members of the Illinois Legislature in 1855; Vancouver Columbian (WA), 23 January 1908, 1:5; Gravestone, Old Vancouver City Cemetery, Vancouver, WA.