Brown, Jeremiah

Jeremiah Brown apparently lived part of his life across the town line in Wayne County, and was a prominent Freemason there. It is clear that Brown was a substantial landowner, for the inventory slip preserved here shows that he left 14 2/5 lots (each presumably hundreds of acres) to his heirs. A careful comparison of the lot numbers listed shows that Brown held land scattered throughout the town, including the land immediately adjacent to the Joseph Smith farm (where the future founder of Mormonism would live on Manchester Lot No. 1 with his family and claim his first visionary experiences in the 1820s).

From the guide to the Jeremiah Brown land records, 1828, (L. Tom Perry Special Collections)