Roger Brown (1749 – 1840) was an American carpenter and soldier in the American Revolutionary War. He was the son of William and Elizabeth Conant Brown, born in Framingham, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1775, Roger, then 26, began building a house for himself on land in Concord, Massachusetts that belonged to his mother's family, the Conants. Local lore, supported by evidence found during the 1889 first renovation, tells of Roger working on the framing of the house when a call to arms came early on the morning of April 19, 1775.
Roger Brown and his carpenters traded hatchets and saws for muskets and walked to Old North Bridge. He served as Corporal under Captain Gleason of the Framingham Minuteman Company. In 1776, Roger Brown joined Captain Hubbard's Concord Infantry as a sergeant indicating that he had settled into his Concord home. Over the next few years, Roger greatly increased his land holdings and prospered in the local farming and business communities. In 1779 he married Mary Hartwell from Lincoln and in 1783 their son, John, was born. Roger returned to military duty in 1786 as Captain of a company charged with the duty of suppressing "Shays' Rebellion" that followed the revolution and was discharged from his successful campaign as Colonel. He was a prominent citizen of Concord, elected as Selectman in 1796 while continuing to farm. He died in 1840 at the age of 91 and is buried in the Hill Burial Ground in Concord Center.
Famous quotes containing the words roger brown, colonel, roger and/or brown:
“We are all aware that speech, like chemistry, has a structure. There is a limited set of elements—vowels and consonants—and these are combined to produce words which, in turn, compound into sentences.”
—Roger Brown (b. 1925)
“I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. “A good colonel makes a good regiment,” is an axiom.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Draw round beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado or ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man’s table, where one is fain to sit mincing and chewing his meat an hour together, drink little, be always wiping his fingers and his chops, and never dare to cough nor sneeze, though he has never so much a mind to it, nor do a many things which a body may do freely by one’s self.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)