Brown, Dauphin

Born: 1792-11-09 Hampden County, Massachusetts

Died: 1871-11-15 Ogle County, Illinois

Flourished: Ogle County, Illinois

Dauphin Brown was an early pioneer of Ogle County, Illinois. He spent his youth and early adulthood on the family farm. In 1814, he married Sila Patrick, with whom he raised eight children. Dauphin and Sila lived on the his father's farm until 1837, when he and three of his sons came to Illinois, spending the first summer on rented land near Dixon. Dauphin purchased eighty acres at Black Walnut Grove in Marion Township, and in the fall of 1837, built a sawmill on Mill Creek. In December 1837, he returned to Massachusetts to settle his affairs, and in the spring of 1838, he and his family moved to Ogle County, where he established a farm near Byron, where he would live the remainder of his life. He became a strong proponent of Oregon as the permanent seat of government for Ogle County, and in 1839, he received appointment as referee of the Oregon Claim Society. From 1840 to 1844, Brown was a member of the County Commissioners' Court. In 1843, he presided over a mass meeting to decide how to proceed after the county courthouse had burned in March 1843. In August 1848, voters in Carroll and Ogle counties elected Brown as a Whig to the Illinois House of Representatives, where he served until November 1849. In 1853, he was a member of the Board of Supervisors for Ogle County.

Gravestone, Stillman Valley Cemetery, Stillman Valley, IL; Illinois Journal (Springfield), 13 September 1848, 3:2; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 217; The History of Ogle County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett, 1878), 323, 341, 430, 461, 824; The Biographical Record of Ogle County, Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1899), 52-53.