Henry B. Brown, 1891-1906

HENRY B. BROWN was born in South Lee, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1836. After graduation from Yale College in 1856, he studied abroad for one year. Upon his return to New England, Brown began reading law in Ellington, Connecticut, and then pursued further studies at the law schools of Yale and Harvard. In 1859, at the age of twenty-three, Brown moved to Detroit, Michigan, and was admitted to the bar. He then established a law practice and developed a specialty in maritime law. In the first year of his practice, Brown was appointed a Deputy United States Marshal for Detroit. Three years later, he was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Brown also held an interim appointment as Circuit Judge for Wayne County in 1868. In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Brown to the United States District Court for Eastern Michigan, where he served for fourteen years. President Benjamin Harrison nominated Brown to the Supreme Court of the United States on December 23, 1890, and the Senate confirmed the appointment on December 29, 1890. Brown retired from the Supreme Court on May 28, 1906, and died on September 4, 1913, at the age of seventy-seven.