Background on Moses Brown
Moses Brown, a reformer who was himself reformed, stood among Rhode Island's most prominent Quakers at the turn of the nineteenth century. Known as a merchant, philanthropist, and ardent abolitionist, Brown was born on Sept. 23, 1738, the youngest of six children of James Brown and his wife Hope (Power). A life-long resident of Providence and a Baptist by birth, Moses was in many ways a dyed in the wool member of the city's elite. His great-great-grandfather Chad Brown was among the earliest English settlers in the colony and one of the signatories to the Providence Compact of 1637, and his grandfather James Brown I was pastor to the First Baptist Church. The generation of Moses' parents made their own distinctive mark, led by his father James who blazed the way to family wealth through trafficking in molasses, rum, and slaves in the triangular trade. James organized what may have been the first slaving expedition out of Providence, sending his ship Mary to the African coast in 1735-1736, making little in profit. The Browns were never major slave traders, at least by the standards of the colony, but neither were they were reluctant to try.
Before he had turned seven months old in 1739, Moses lost his father at sea and was taken into the care of his uncle Obadiah. Like James, Obadiah was a pillar of the mercantile community in Providence, and like James, he made himself a wealthy man. At 13, Moses joined his uncle as an apprentice in Obadiah Brown & Co., and when he attained his majority, he, like his four elder brothers, was made a partner. One of the first merchants in the city to trade directly with England, bypassing his more substantial neighbors in Boston and Newport, Obadiah was also an early investor in the whaling industry, opening a spermaceti candle factory prior to 1751, and he supported a diverse operation that ran from distilling rum to producing iron. Having served as supercargo aboard the Mary during its African voyage, Obadiah had few qualms about attempting to traffick in human cargo. In 1759, he organized a slaving expedition to Africa, only to have his ship, the aptly named Wheel of Fortune, fall prey to French privateers.
Upon Obadiah's death in 1762, shares in his firm were divided among the four Brown brothers -- Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses -- and the firm was reorganized as Nicholas Brown & Co. Like his brothers, Moses became a slave owner and a willing participant in the high-risk, high-reward triangular trade, although the brothers' fortunes in that line were little better than those of the Browns who went before. In 1765, their ship Sally returned to port having fended off a shipboard insurrection and reported that 109 of the 196 African captives had died by violence, disease, suicide, or starvation during the Middle Passage. Learning a financial lesson if not exactly a moral one, three of the four Brown brothers never again took part directly in the slave trade, and John's eagerness to continue investing in slaving voyages eventually led to the dissolution of the brothers' partnership in 1769. Even then, each of the brothers continued to be willing to trade goods produced by enslaved people and to sell to slave traders and slave owners.
When Moses married his cousin Anna Brown (Obadiah's daughter) in 1764, still in his mid-twenties, he was already enjoying the fruits of wealth and social influence. While raising a family that included a daughter Sarah (1764-1794) and sons William (1768-1799), Moses (1768-1797), Obadiah (1771-1822), and Edward (1772-1780), Brown stepped up his public commitments. Selected as a Deputy in the Rhode Island General Assembly (1764-1771) during an increasingly fractious time between colony and metropole, he aligned himself with the nascent revolutionary cause, becoming a member of the committee to oppose the Stamp Act in 1765. His brother John was even more ardent in his opposition to the crown, leading the party of Rhode Islanders in 1772 that famously torched the British schooner Gaspee, which had run aground while conducting anti-smuggling operations.
In local affairs, Moses emerged as the principal advocate for relocating the Rhode Island College from Warren, where it had been founded, to Providence in 1769, and he and his brothers backed their support by donating the land on which the new college would be built. Brown pursued his own status as a learned man, taking part in observations on the Transit of Venus in 1769, making observations on lightning bugs, and even recording the course of kine pox among his own children after inoculating them in 1808.
The path on which Moses set out, however, took a sharp after his wife Anna died in 1773. The disaster of the Sally had already led Brown to question the course of his life and the influence of Quaker writers like Anthony Benezet fueled his doubts, but Anna's death led Brown into a period of intense scrutiny of his political and social views. After a period of deep self-reflection, he refashioned himself, withdrawing from most business concerns and joining the Society of Friends formally in 1774. He signaled his new commitments by manumitting the men and women he held in bondage, paying them for their services. "I saw may slaves with my spiritual eyes as plainly as I see you now," he wrote late in life, "and it was given to me as clearly to understand that the sacrifice that was called for of my hand was to give them liberty."
This liberation set Brown into active agitation against slavery. He and his brother John became bitter antagonists, waging a years-long debate in both private and public over the morality of slavery. At the same time, Moses plied his fellow merchants with moral suasion and lobbied reluctant legislatures in New England to abolish the slave trade, distributing and printing antislavery literature and carrying on a close correspondence with other abolitionists in the United States and England. Brown helped to found the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave-Trade in 1786, one year before the state banned the slave trade, focusing its energies -- despite little support from political circles -- on punishing violations of the act.
In 1788, Brown renewed his efforts in business, entering a partnership with a cousin, Smith Brown, and William Almy, who later married Moses' daughter Sarah. Having learned of English innovations in powering textile mills, Almy and the Browns hired Samuel Slater in 1790 to construct the nation's first water-powered spinning mill in Pawtucket, R.I.: an event that is often credited with bringing the industrial revolution to America. For Moses, the mill was in part an attempt to lure investment away from the slave trade and toward domestic manufacture, though he appears to have been unaware of the irony that cotton mills became primary consumers of the king crop of the slaveholding South.
Brown's philanthropy and activism spread widely from its antislavery base. In addition to supporting the peace movement, temperance, and Indian rights, among other causes, and he was an avid supporter of the Society of Friends. Brown was called upon often to support construction of new meeting houses in New England and he was particularly strong in educational causes. In addition to his efforts on behalf of the future Brown University, Brown was a valued supporter of the African Union Meeting and School-House and helped found the Yearly Meeting School on Aquidneck Island in 1784 as well as the New England Yearly Meeting Boarding School when it reopened in Providence in 1819. The school was named in his honor in 1904.
After Anna's death, Moses remarried twice, to Mary Olney (1743-1794) and Phebe Lockwood (1747-1808). Although he lived well into his nineties, Brown remained active in reform causes until the end of his life. He died in 1832 shortly before his 96th birthday. He had outlived all three of his wives, all of his children, and three of four step-children.
