Bio: Brown, Hon. Neal (1856 - 1917)

Contact: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Brown, Alward

----Source: History of Marathon County Wisconsin and Representative Citizens, by Louis Marchetti, 1913.

Brown, Hon. Neal (24 Feb 1856 - 22 Sep 1917)

Hon. Neal Brown is one of the distinguished men of Wausau. He was born on a farm in Jefferson County and formerly took pride in the assertion that there is no work on the farm which he has not done or cannot do. Nevertheless he preferred mental to manual labor, graduating from the law department of the state university in 1880 and coming to Wausau, opened his law office in the fall of the same year.

Of course clients did not come to him in alarming numbers for some time, but he plodded on, got into courts, and after a few years had established a remunerative practice, not only in state courts, including the Supreme Court, but including the federal courts as well. When the Law and Land Association was formed in 1885 he became the head of the legal department and since that time, until recently when he gave his time to other business, had been very successful as a practicing attorney. As a lawyer he had his successes and his defeats, as every lawyer with a large practice has, but he never lost a case for lack of preparation or the best presentation of the case on his part, but simply because his client's case deserved defeat. He was elected as a Democrat to the State Assembly in 1890 and to the State Senate in 1892 and made a good record as a legislator. To him was due the extension of the lien law, securing to the laborer his wages for all work done on all products of the forest, where there formerly was no lien, except on logs. His friends lovingly refer to him as the orator, philosopher and litterateur of Wausau, and he may justly claim all these honorable titles. Twice he made a political canvass of the state, not as a candidate for office, and it was the unqualified opinion of his party friends that his speeches were eloquent and effective. He is equally strong as a forensic debater, which is conceded by all his brother attorneys. In the session of the Legislature of 1893 he received the vote of the democratic minority for United States Senator and in 1908 the democratic primary nomination for the same high office and the vote of his party for this high office in the Legislature in the next session.

Neal Brown is entirely at home with the old and new classics, has published himself essays on literary topics, and published a book entitled "Critical Confessions," which was favorably received by the literary critics and secured him a place among literary men. In later years he has been called to address chambers of commerce in Milwaukee and Boston and other important business bodies. His addresses and writings show him to be a man of original thought and a correct reasoned, impatient of the shams and shallow pretensions, which in these days are attempted to be passed off as statesmanship.

In later years he has withdrawn from active law practice, and had given his thought and ability to the organization of large business enterprises, such as the Wausau Street Railroad Company and other large business concerns. The water powers of the Wisconsin, which were formerly in three hands, the owners of the saw mills, have been under his guidance largely, united in one strong company, but instead of three owners there are now a hundred owners, nearly all in the city of Wausau, stockholders, and the power ? electrical power ? drives wheels in many factories in this city and lights it and more will be developed.

It was through his efforts, after years of perseverance, that a company was organized to develop the water power at Rothschield, of which he was the president, and through his effort again that a large number of men, capitalists, took over the rights of this company and actually developed the power and built up the Marathon County Paper Mill, one of the largest business concerns of the county.

He is directly interested in that paper mill and one of the directors of the corporation. He has proved an organizer of large capital by uniting many men of moderate means, and in that may must be regarded as one of the best resourceful businessmen of the Wisconsin Valley. He loves nature above everything, even business, and at his summer home on the Plover River entertains his friends during fishing and hunting season in a royal manner.

But the people of Wausau love him best as the man who has changed the dreary aspect of our cemetery into a beautiful grove of trees and cultivated grounds, so that our grief for our dead departed ones is softened by a visit to their last resting place, rather than increased by the desolation of the place.

Neal Brown comes from good old Connecticut stock. Ebenezer Brown, his great grandfather, was a soldier in the American Revolution, and Hon. Neal Brown preserves as a family relic a powder horn worn by Ebenezer at the siege of Boston. His father was Thurlow Weed Brown, editor of the Cauga Chief at Auburn, N. Y., in the early fifties. He married Helen Alward, and the family moved to Jefferson County, Wis., where Neal was born. His father and his aunt, Emma Brown, edited the Wisconsin Chief in Ft. Atkinson. Thurlow Weed Brown died in 1866 and his wife in 1890. The son Neal Brown graduated from the law department of the Wisconsin University in 1880 and came immediately thereafter to Wausau.

***Note: Birth and death dates were taken from the Marshfield News Herald:

Brown, Neal 24 Feb 1856-22 Sept 1917 Various Mfld newspapers.