Guide to the John Brown Papers

John Brown was born in Ireland in 1728. He graduated from Nassau Hall, College of New Jersey (later Princeton), in 1749. He was licensed by the New Castle Presbytery, studied theology under the Rev. Samuel Blair and was ordained at Faggs Manor in Chester County, PA. He went to the Valley of Virginia as a missionary and in 1753 he was called to the Timber Ridge and New Providence churches. He resigned Timber Ridge pastorate in 1767. A flourishing grammar school he established near his home was a forerunner of Washington and Lee College. In 1797 he moved to Kentucky where his children had settled. His oldest daughter married the Rev. Thomas B. Craighead of Tennessee. Brown died in 1803 at the age of 75.