Browne, Henry Joseph, 1919-1980.

Father Henry Joseph Browne, born in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in 1919, was an historian, archivist, and community activist. He entered the Catholic priesthood as a young man and devoted himself, for a while, to a scholarly and ecclesiastical life. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Catholic University of America where he went on to serve as a faculty member in church history and the University Archivist. Upon leaving that position he returned to New York to teach first at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, then Cathedral College, and finally Rutgers University in New Jersey.

His primary research interests were in social and labor history as well as church history, particularly in New York City. He published a number of pamphlets and articles on these issues, and a book on the history of the Catholic Knights of Labor. Additionally, he did extensive research on and drafted a biography of John Hughes, the first archbishop of New York.

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