Browning, Milton D.

Born: 1810-12-25 Harrison County, Kentucky

Died: 1881-11-06 Burlington, Iowa

Milton D. Browning was an attorney, city government official, and territorial and state politician. A sibling of Orville H. Browning, Milton Browning received his education in neighborhood schools in his native county. He resided on the family farm until the age of twenty-three, when he moved to the Iowa Territory, settling in Quincy. He read law and earned admission to the Iowa bar. In 1837, he left Quincy for Burlington, becoming one of early pioneers of that town. Gravitating to politics and the Whig Party, Browning served on the Burlington City Council and was the city solicitor. In 1840, he won election to the Legislative Assembly of the Iowa Territory, representing Des Moines County in the House of Representatives. He represented Des Moines County in the Iowa Senate in 1846, 1848, 1852, and 1854. As the Whig Party began to disintegrate, Browning moved closer to the Democratic Party—a stance confirmed when he refused to follow his fellow Whigs in their opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Benjamin F. Gue, History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (New York: Century History, 1903), 3:444, 459, 460, 462, 464; Wm. Terrell Lewis, Genealogy of the Lewis Family in America, From the Middle of the Seventeenth Century Down to the Present Time (Louisville, KY: The Courier-Journal Job Printing, 1893), 135; Augustine M. Antrobus, History of Des Moines County Iowa and its People (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1915), 1:86, 390, 400-401; “Milton D. Browning,” The Iowa Legislature, https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/legislator?ga=4&personID=5788, accessed 23 April 2020; Gravestone, Aspen Grove Cemetery, Burlington, IA.