Moses Brown papers

Moses Brown was a prominent landowner, shipbuilder, and merchant from Newburyport, Massachusetts, who invested in the sugar, molasses, and rum trade during the late 18th and early 19th century. Brown was born on October 2, 1742 in Newbury, Mass., the youngest of thirteen children to Joseph, Jr. and Abigail Pearson Brown. He was apprenticed to a chaise maker when he was a boy. After his apprenticeship he moved to Newburyport to start his own chaise making and repair business. Using some of the earnings he made before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Brown invested in the importation of sugar and molasses from the West Indies. He profited considerably from this investment and, following the war, he devoted his full effort to this business by exporting lumber, meat, fish, and dry goods and importing sugar and molasses to distill rum. He expanded his holdings by purchasing ships and widespread real estate, especially wharves, warehouses, and distilleries along the Newburyport waterfront. By 1790 Brown was the second wealthiest man in Newburyport and would soon become its largest real estate holder. His fleet of ships sailed to the Carolinas, West Indies, and parts of northern Europe. He was a very active investor with several other prominent Newburyport merchants, especially William Bartlet, in such undertakings as the Newburyport Marine Insurance Company, the Merrimack Bank, Plum Island Company Turnpike, the Newburyport Woolen Manufactory, and the Andover Theological Institution. In 1791 he bought Tristram Dalton’s home at 94 State Street in Newburyport and lived there until his death on February 9, 1827.