Early Life
Brown was born to the physician Frederick Augustus Brown and Katharine Hodges in the town of Webster, Massachusetts. His great-great grandfather, businessman Samuel Slater, was the chief founder of Webster and is credited with beginning the industrial revolution in the United States with the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1790. Early family wealth disappeared through a series of misfortunes, and Brown and his younger siblings, Fritz, Joyce and Kitty, grew up in relative poverty. From the age of 16, while living with cousins in Boston, the rebellious Brown adopted a life and world philosophy at odds to that of his parents, and he undertook a process of self-discovery that led him to a failed enrollment at Columbia School of Journalism.
Read more about this topic: William Slater Brown
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