Thomas Storrow Brown (July 7, 1803 – November 26, 1888) was a journalist, writer, orator, and revolutionary in
Lower CanadaThe Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
(present-day
QuebecQuebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking identity and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
).
Born in
St. AndrewsSt. Andrews is a Canadian town in Charlotte County, New Brunswick.It is sometimes referred to in tourism marketing by its unofficial nickname "St. Andrews-by-the-sea".-Geography:St...
,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
, the son of Henry Barlow Brown and Rebecca Appleton, as a young man he moved to
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
, Lower Canada. Once there, he found work and with his savings eventually went into the hardware business. His operation encountered financial difficulties and closed leaving Brown to find other employment.
A member of the Unitarian Church, Thomas Brown was an advocate for both social and political reform, supporting the concept of responsible government in which the members of the
Legislative Council of QuebecFrom 1867 until 1968, the Legislative Council of Quebec was the unelected upper house of the bicameral legislature in the Canadian province of Quebec...
would be appointed by the
Legislative Assembly'sThe Legislative Assembly of Quebec was the name of the lower house of Quebec's legislature until 1968, when it was renamed the National Assembly of Quebec. At the same time, the upper house of the legislature, the Legislative Council, was abolished...
majority party.
Thomas Storrow Brown (July 7, 1803 – November 26, 1888) was a journalist, writer, orator, and revolutionary in
Lower CanadaThe Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...
(present-day
QuebecQuebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking identity and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
).
Biography
Born in
St. AndrewsSt. Andrews is a Canadian town in Charlotte County, New Brunswick.It is sometimes referred to in tourism marketing by its unofficial nickname "St. Andrews-by-the-sea".-Geography:St...
,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
, the son of Henry Barlow Brown and Rebecca Appleton, as a young man he moved to
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
, Lower Canada. Once there, he found work and with his savings eventually went into the hardware business. His operation encountered financial difficulties and closed leaving Brown to find other employment.
A member of the Unitarian Church, Thomas Brown was an advocate for both social and political reform, supporting the concept of responsible government in which the members of the
Legislative Council of QuebecFrom 1867 until 1968, the Legislative Council of Quebec was the unelected upper house of the bicameral legislature in the Canadian province of Quebec...
would be appointed by the
Legislative Assembly'sThe Legislative Assembly of Quebec was the name of the lower house of Quebec's legislature until 1968, when it was renamed the National Assembly of Quebec. At the same time, the upper house of the legislature, the Legislative Council, was abolished...
majority party. Brown also worked to improve social conditions through aid to the poor. Influenced by the
republicA republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people have an impact on its government. The word 'republic' is derived from the Latin phrase res publica which can be translated as "a public affair".Both modern and ancient republics vary widely in their...
form of governmentA form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a body politic. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government"...
in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, over time his frustrations with the government of
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
saw him join the
Montreal Vindicator newspaper in 1832 at the invitation of his friend
Edmund Bailey O'CallaghanEdmund Bailey O'Callaghan, was a doctor and journalist.Born in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, he studied medicine in Paris and immigrated to Lower Canada in 1823 where he became involved in the political reform movement of the Parti patriote...
. Following the death of founder
Daniel TraceyDaniel Tracey was born in Roscrea, Tipperary County, Ireland, a doctor, journalist and Canadian politician....
, O'Callaghan had been appointed the paper's new editor and with Brown, they continued to espouse the former owner's radical views. Their attacks were especially harsh against the Governor of the Colony,
Lord GosfordArchibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford GCB , styled The Honourable from 1790 to 1806 and then Lord Acheson to 1807, was a British politician who served as Lieutenant-Governor of Lower Canada and Governor General of British North America in the 19th century.-Biography:Born at Markethill, County...
despite the fact that he had ordered the dissolution of the British Rifle Corps in January 1836.
In 1833, Brown's wife, Jane Hughes, died. By this time, Brown had moved firmly from a moderate who sought to reform the political system, to a radical wanting to fundamentally alter Canadian society. In 1837 he participated in the
Lower Canada RebellionThe Lower Canada Rebellion , commonly referred to as the Patriots' War by Quebecers, is the name given to the armed conflict between the rebels of Lower Canada and the British colonial power of that province...
and was head of the military faction of the rebel group, the
Société des Fils de la LibertéThe Société des Fils de la Liberté was a paramilitary organization founded in August of 1837 in Lower Canada by young supporters of the Parti patriote who became impatient with the pace of progress of the movement for constitutional and parliamentary reforms...
, that openly advocating revolution. In November, Brown was wounded and partially blinded in one eye during the street fight between the Société des Fils de la Liberté and the
Doric ClubThe Doric Club was an association of Loyals set up in Lower Canada by Adam Thom, a lawyer and journalist, in March 1836. A noted opponent of the Patriotes, the group was both a social club and a paramilitary organization...
but nevertheless in December he still fought against the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
at the
Battle of Saint-CharlesThe Battle of Saint-Charles was fought on November 25, 1837 between Great Britain and Lower Canada rebels. The British were victorious.On the morning of 25 November 1837, 2 days after Charles Gore's defeat at the Battle of Saint-Denis and the retreat to Sorel the troops of Colonel George Wetherall...
. Defeated, he escaped to the United States where he worked as a journalist in
FloridaFlorida is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the north. It was the 27th state admitted to the United States...
. In 1844, he was granted an
amnestyAmnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent persons. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offense. The word has the same root as amnesia...
and returned to Montréal where Charles Wilson gave him a job in his hardware store. Brown married Hester Livingston in 1860 and a little more than a year later was given administrative posts in the government. Thomas Storrow Brown died at his home in Montreal in 1888 at the age of eighty-five.
Works
- Address of the Fils de la liberté of Montreal to the young people of the colonies of North America, 1837 (online)
- A History of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada compiled from public documents, 1864 online
- "My Escape in 1837", in New Dominion Monthly, 1869 or (online)
- "Brief Sketch of the Life and Times of the late Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau", in New Dominion Monthly, 1872 (online)
- The Rebellion of 1837; Interesting reminiscences; Progress of events; The Ministers sent out from England, 1873
- Strong drink: what it is, and what it does, 1884