Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

John Willcox Brown Reminiscences, 1904-1913. Accession 87, Personal Papers Collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

Gift of J. Willcox Brown, Afton, Virginia, 18 March 1913.

Biographical/Historical Information

John Willcox Brown was born 17 July 1833 in Petersburg, Virginia, to John Thompson Brown (1802-1836) and Mary Willcox Brown (1810-1868). He attended the University of Virginia from 1851 to 1853. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in Company E, 12th Virginia Infantry as a 2nd lieutenant. He rose to the rank of 1st lieutenant, then declined reelection to that post in 1862. Brown received a medical discharge in February 1863. Later that year, he was appointed a lieutenant of artillery in the Richmond defenses. In 1864, Brown was made inspector of ordinance and director of army work at Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. In 1865, he was appointed a lieutenant colonel of artillery. After the war, he returned to Petersburg, and in 1869 Brown moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he became one of that city's leading bankers. He retired to Elsham in Nelson County, Virginia, where he died 21 February 1914. Brown married Ellen Turner McFarland (b. 1846) and they had at least three children.

Scope and Content Information

Reminiscences, 1904-1913, of John Willcox Brown (1833-1914) of Afton, Chesterfield County, Virginia, concerning Virginia's post-Civil War debt controversy and loss of a large private mortgage investment operation due to the failure of the state legislature to repeal Virginia's usury law; the failed effort of an English contractor to purchase the James River and Kanawha Canal due to the Virginia general assembly; Brown's post-Civil War recovery plan for the state; why Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was never tried on charges of treason; Robert E. Lee's (1807-1870) polite refusal to become managing director of the Richmond, Virginia, branch of the Universal Life Insurance Company; and Brown's personal relationships with slaves before and freedmen after the Civil War. Includes a transcript of a letter, 23 December 1868, from Robert E. Lee to J. Willcox Brown, and a letter, 18 March 1913, from Brown to H. R. McIlwaine (1864-1934), Virginia State Librarian.