Collection MSG 405 - Thomas Storrow Brown Collection

Thomas Storrow Brown was born in 1803 in St Andrews, New Brunswick, and died on December 26, 1888, in Montreal. In 1818, he went to Montreal and opened a hardware business, but it failed in 1835. At some point in the 1830s, he became involved with the Patriotes and in 1835, he made his views public. From 1836 to 1837, Brown contributed to the Vindicator, and forwarded a dozen or so open letters, under the pseudonym L.M.N., to the Express (New York). In 1837, he preached revolution to the Fils de la Liberté, and when the members of the Doric Club sacked the offices of the Vindicator during a riot on the 6th of November, Brown was seriously wounded in one eye. Ten days later he left Montreal for Varennes, after the government had issued warrants for the arrest of Patriote leaders. On the 25th of November, when the fight against the government forces at Saint-Charles had scarcely begun, Brown left in search of reinforcements, disappearing from the battlefield. He went to Saint-Denis before fleeing to the United States, reaching Berkshire, Vermont, on December 10th. He was imprisoned for nearly a month for debts contracted in Canada, and then had trouble integrating himself into the group of political refugees. In the spring of 1838, Brown published a long article on the rebellion in the Vermonter (Vergennes, Vermont) and shortly after, left for Florida where he edited the Florida Herald in Key West. When this venture failed, he found himself a post as an auditor but when amnesty was proclaimed in 1844, he returned to Montreal and went back to hardware. In 1862, he left the hardware store following his appointment as official assignee responsible for applying the new bankruptcy law. He kept this post until he became completely blind, about ten years before his death.