Introduction

Biography

Samuel was the son of car­pen­ter and paint­er Ti­mo­thy Hill Brown, and hym­nist Phoe­be Brown, and hus­band of Eli­za­beth Good­win Bar­tlett.

He was edu­cat­ed at Am­herst Col­lege; Yale Col­lege (gra­du­at­ed 1832); the Pres­by­ter­ian Theo­lo­gic­al Se­mi­na­ry, Co­lum­bia, South Ca­ro­li­na; and Un­ion Se­mi­na­ry, New York.

He taught in Can­ton (now Guang­zhou), Chi­na; Ma­cau; and Hong Kong (1838–47). Up­on his re­turn to Am­eri­ca, he ran an aca­de­my in Rome, New York (1848–51).

In 1851, he went to a Re­formed Dutch pas­tor­ate in Owas­co Lake, New York. A school he found­ed there, Spring­side, was part of the Un­der­ground Rail­road that help­ed es­caped slaves move north be­fore the Am­eri­can ci­vil war.

In 1859, the Board of For­eign Mis­sions of the Re­formed Dutch Church sent Brown to Yo­ko­ha­ma, Ja­pan, as the first Am­eri­can mis­sion­ary in that coun­try.

He trans­lat­ed a num­ber of books from Eng­lish to Ja­pa­nese, pre­pared Ja­pa­nese gram­mar vol­umes, and helped found Mei­ji Gak­uin Uni­ver­si­ty in To­kyo.