Researching William Browne

Browne entered the War Office in 1856 and became a senior clerk in 1878. He became a principal in the Finance Department in 1890 and retired from the War Office in 1897.

The Browne Scholarship in the French and German Languages was created in honour of his wife.

He died in Karlovy Vary on 15 August 1904.

Browne's coal mines, located near Montevallo, Alabama, were under contract to the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. The Confederate war effort was also supplied by Browne's iron furnace located on the Little Cahaba River until it was destroyed by Union forces led by General James H. Wilson in April 1865 .

Browne was born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1804. He was the son of Phineas Browne, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and a descendant of William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony. Browne emigrated to Alabama in 1831 to join his cousin to work on a construction contract for the Tennessee Canal at Muscle Shoals. Browne soon sold his shares in this contract and moved on to New Orleans to work on a canal from the new American Quarter to Lake Pontchartrain. Browne was involved in subsequent business ventures including a steamship company operating between New Orleans and Mobile, general merchandise stores, corn mills, lumber, coal, and iron.

Browne also invested heavily in real estate in Mobile, Alabama, along with Henry Hitchcock, Alabama's first Attorney General and later Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In addition to his business adventures, Browne was involved in Alabama politics, serving in the Alabama Legislature in 1845, representing the Mobile district, and attended the 1860 Democratic National Convention as a delegate.

The son of Liberius Browne and Bridget O'Reilly, he was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and was educated at Holy Cross School, Saint Bonaventure's College, Merton College, Oxford, the University of Toronto and Gray's Inn in London. Browne was called to the bars of both England and Newfoundland in 1922 and practised law in Newfoundland.

Browne ran unsuccessfully for the Placentia-St. Mary's seat in the Newfoundland assembly in 1923. He was elected for St. John's West in 1924 and defeated when he ran for reelection in 1928. He was elected to the assembly again in 1932 for Harbour Main-Bell Island and so was a member of the last Newfoundland House of Assembly in 1933 when the Commission of Government took over governing Newfoundland. He was a cabinet minister in the government of Frederick C. Alderdice, first serving as a minister without portfolio and then as Minister of Finance and Customs and Minister of Justice.

In 1934, he was named King's Counsel. From 1934 to 1939, Browne was a judge in the Central District Court. In 1949, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the riding of St. John's West. A Progressive Conservative, he was defeated in the 1953 federal election. He was elected again to the House of Assembly in 1954. He was re-elected to the House of Commons in the 1957 and 1958 elections. He was defeated in the 1962 election and again in the 1965 election. From 1957 to 1960, he was a Minister without Portfolio in the cabinet of John Diefenbaker. From 1960 to 1962, he was the Solicitor General of Canada. He retired from politics in 1962 and returned to the practice of law.

In 1981, he published his biography, Eighty-four years a Newfoundlander: Memoirs of William J. Browne .

He was married four times: first to Mary Grace Harris in 1924, to Mary Roche in 1933, to Margaret Fleming (née Buckley) in 1951., and to Dr Norah Elphinstone Renouf in 1970, outliving all his wives except for Norah, who died November 24, 2010.

Browne died in St. John's at the age of 91.

There is a William Joseph Browne fonds at Library and Archives Canada.

He was born at Singleton to grazier John Browne and Elizabeth Alcorn. He became a grazier at Singleton, and also obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1864. On 12 December 1866 he married Jessie Campbell MacTaggart, with whom he had eight children. In 1872 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Patrick's Plains, serving until his defeat in 1880. Browne died at Manly in 1916.