Jacob Brown - Family

Family

In December 1802, he married Pamela Williams, then seventeen. They eventually had four sons (Gouverneur, Jacob, William and Nathan) and five daughters (Mary, Eliza, Pamela, Margaret and Katherine).

Brown's first born son, Gouverneur, drowned in an ice-skating accident at the age of twelve.

Two of General Brown's sons, Jacob (class of 1832) and William Spencer (class of 1835), graduated from West Point. However Jacob resigned after four years service in the army, and William resigned after only six months, both of them dying young.

Brown's fourth son, Nathan William, did not attend the academy but had a successful military career. In 1849, at age thirty-one, Nathan was appointed a major. In 1864, during the Civil War, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and served as deputy paymaster general. He became a brigadier general and paymaster general in 1880 and retired in 1882 after 33 years in the army.

Katherine married Larkin Smith, a West Point classmate of her brother William. In 1861, Smith resigned his army commission to serve as assistant quartermaster general of the Confederate army. Pamela's husband, David Hammond Vinton, served in the same post during the Civil War, but on the Union side.

Eliza married Edmund Kirby, a colonel in the Mexican-American War, and a U.S. Army Paymaster. Their son Edmund also attended West Point, graduated in 1861 and was commissioned as an artillery officer. He served with the Army of the Potomac from First Bull Run through Chancellorsville, where he was severely wounded. Nominated for brigadier general by President Lincoln, he died before the Senate could confirm the promotion. He was only 23 years of age.