Henry Brown
Henry William Brown was born in Canada on July 17, 1851 to parents originally from Ireland. Brown left home in 1865, when he was fourteen years old, and moved to Montana at the age of eighteen. He hit it rich in the Bonanza Claims during the Cariboo Gold Rush in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon during the 1870s. While in the Yukon, Brown met and married his wife Anna. They had four sons: Byron, Ferdinand, Randolph and Lincoln.
Brown began his photographic career in Glendale, Montana, in the early to mid-1880s, taking city, mining and portrait photographs. Brown later homesteaded near Drayton Harbor, in Blaine, Washington and then moved to Custer, Whatcom County, Washington, in 1903. Henry continued taking photographs while also owning a dairy, saw mills, logging operations, and, at one point, 11 shake mills in Custer. Henry Brown died on April 19, 1935 and is buried in Enterprise Cemetery, located near Ferndale, Washington.
The Collection
The Henry Brown Collection consists of 863 glass plate negatives, 770 reference prints of glass plates and 194 original prints that match glass plates. Many of the negatives are in various stages of deterioration, evident in several of the images selected here. The collection was donated to the Whatcom Museum in 1995 by William Pratt. Brown was Pratt's grandfather's uncle on his father's side.
