rancis Brown was the son of Benjamin and Prudence (Kelley) Brown, and
was born at Chester, Rockingham County, N. H., January 11, 1784. His
father was a merchant, and had a highly respectable standing in
society. His mother was a person of superior intellect and heart, and,
though she died when he had only reached his tenth year, she had
impressed upon him some of the most striking of her own
characteristics; particularly her uncommon love of order and
propriety, even in the most minute concerns, and her uncompromising
adherence to her own convictions of truth and right. In his early
boyhood he evinced the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge,
and never suffered any opportunity for intellectual improvement to
escape him. At the age of fourteen, he ventured to ask his father to
furnish him with the means of a collegiate education; but, in
consideration of his somewhat straitened circumstances, he felt
constrained to deny the request. By a subsequent marriage, however,
his circumstances were improved; and the new mother of young Brown,
with most commendable generosity, assumed the pecuniary responsibility
of his going to college. He always cherished the most grateful
recollection of her kindness; and, but a few days before his death, he
said to her with the deepest filial sensibility, "My dear mother,
whatever good I have done in the world, and whatever honor I have
received, I owe it all to you."

In his sixteenth year he became a member of Atkinson Academy, then
under the care of the Hon. John Vose, and among the most respectable
institutions of the kind in New England. His instructor has rendered
the following testimony concerning him at that period: "Though he made
no pretensions to piety during his residence at the academy, he was
exceedingly amiable in his affections and moral in his deportment. It
is very rare we find an individual in whom so many excellencies
centre. To a sweet disposition was united a strong mind; to an
accuracy which examined the minutiae of everything a depth of
investigation which penetrated the most profound. I recollect that
when I wrote recommending him to college, I informed Dr. Wheelock I
had sent him an Addison."

Of the formation of his religious character little more is known than
that it was of silent, yet steady growth. It was not till the year
that he became a tutor in college that he made a public profession of
his faith, by connecting himself with the church in his native