S. J. Brown, farmer and stock dealer, was born in 1843, in Watauga County, N. C., the fourth of ten children of James and Harriet (Farthing) Brown, natives of North Carolina, who came to this county in 1846, the former of English and the latter of Scotch-English stock. They were engaged in farming and stock dealing. Our subject was three years old when they came to this county, and when seventeen began for himself. In 1861he enlisted in Company D, First North Carolina Confederate Cavalry, serving at Chickamauga, where he was wounded, and then transferred to the Sixth North Carolina Regiment, and surrendered with Johnston’s army. After returning, he studied law, and attended school, and was admitted to the bar January 18,1868, by the supreme court of North Carolina. Circumstances compelled him to become a hardware clerk at Salisbury, N. C., and six years later at another place. where for two years he engaged independently, and since then has been at his present location, as a farmer. In February, 1874, he married Addle, a daughter of Jacob and Celia (Perkins) Wagner, natives of this and Ashe County, N. C., respectively. The former is a son of Mathias, who settled in this county on our subject’s present farm, about 1789. Our subject’s children are Tallulah W., Charles W. W., Thomas J. and Addielee. Both are Methodists, and he a Democrat, and a Master Mason. Our subject received about $3,000 of property through his wife, but now owns a fine farm of 400 acres, and is an enterprising farmer.

Transcribed from Godspeed’s History of TN (1896)