Scandals in the Alexander Brown Family

The Alex. Brown & Sons of Baltimore investment bank was operated by the fourth generation after its founder during the troubled gilded age in the United States which saw Grover Cleveland serving twice in interrupted terms. Those were years of gold shortages--a gold "drain"--when American brokerage companies, which had sold their securities to wealthy Europeans, continued to hear what 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot once termed a "giant sucking sound," as gold continued to be siphoned back to Europe to pay dividends and interest on those securities which financed American infrastructure.

Those in power sought out wealthy patrons--or even determined ways to "create" wealth among their support network--who would agree to use their wealth to underwrite American debt. J.P. Morgan's network (consisting of steel companies, electric railways, mining and the like) had acted in that role until Morgan's death in 1913. That same year saw the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, which was to assist in the rise of a replacement network whose wealth came from oil.

In this series of studies of the Alexander Brown's descendants, we continue with the heirs to Alex. Brown & Sons in the post civil war era and "gilded age." 

Scandal in the Third Generation

Alexander Davison Brown, born in 1823, had no desire to work for the banking firm and was primarily engaged in horse-breeding as early as 1856. His interest in steeplechase racing helped to encourage creation of Baltimore's Pimlico track in 1870, on a site of land his father and brother-in-law, had helped the governor, Oden Bowie, acquire for an agricultural exposition center in 1868.

After attaining the title of “Colonel” during the War Between the States, Col. A. D. Brown lived at Brooklandwood—the country estate owned by his parents, George and Isabella McLanahan Brown, in the Green Spring Valley north of Baltimore. The mansion had been built in 1797 by “The Signer” Charles Carroll and later became administration building for St. Paul’s School for Boys. Town and Country magazine in 1911 called it “the most pretentious estate in the Green Spring Valley.”

Colonel A. D. Brown, after returning from fighting in the Civil War, retired to his country estate to breed dogs and horses, emerging in August 1880 when the front page of the Washington Post declared, rather humorously, that the 65-year-old widower had taken a new wife—a much younger divorcee named Laura Hobson, “well known in the demimonde and sporting circles” in Washington and in Baltimore, where

“her palace of sin … has always been the resort of the ‘fancy’ of both sexes of the National Capitol.” Lest anyone be confused, the article identified the somewhat elderly groom as the eldest son of George Brown, “for a long time at the head of the well-known banking firm of Alexander Brown & Sons.”

Click to enlarge.

Another article appeared as far afield as Helena, Montana, in 1887 concerning divorce pleadings filed back in Baltimore (inset to left). Col. Brown's son (who would be known as Brook Brown) and his wife, formerly Fannie Mactier Winchester, were not as amused as was the rest of the country, on June 15, 1889, when a piece in the Chicago Daily Tribune under the headline, “A Baltimore Society Scandal,” revealed that Alexander S. [sic] Brown “of the great banking-house of Alexander Brown & Sons [of Baltimore] and of Brown Bros. & Co. of New York, Philadelphia, and London” had been indicted and charged with “keeping a disorderly house.” Continuing, the story described Brown’s reputation, not as a dissipated man, but one long known as a clubman fond of social life, speculating that the “intimacy” between Brown and Hobson had existed “probably ten years or more.”

 To add insult to the scandal, the vows were read at the parsonage of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., the "Church of the Presidents," located near Lafayette Square across from the White House (1525 H Street NW, Washington DC 20005). The couple returned to live at Brookland Wood, where, they reputedly held “big celebrations and orgies” accompanied by “convivial spirits,” according to Brown's obituary in The New York Times - March 21, 1892, Page 5. That is not how most society men would want to be remembered, and clearly not what his daughter-in-law and her family, the Winchesters, wanted to have associated with her children.

Fannie Winchester and George B. Brown (1845-1902) had been married in 1866 when she was only eighteen and he 21. Her parents were Alexander Winchester and Sarah Carroll, daughter of Henry Carroll of Clynmalira, and lived a few miles to the north of Brooklandville in Monkton. As we saw in previous segments, Henry Carroll and his father, Charles Carroll, were important clients of the Alex. Brown & Sons bank from its earliest days.

George and Fannie made their home at Fernwood until they inherited the Brookland Wood estate in 1892. Although George died only ten years later, Fannie continued at the Maryland farms until her own death. Their first child, a girl named Bessie, lived only a month, but would be followed by another girl in 1870 named Colegate Nesbit, with Isabel, or Isabella as she preferred, joining her sister in 1872. By the time Col. A.D. Brown embarrassed the family with his inappropriate marriage to the city's notorious prostitute, there were six children ranging in age from 10-2 living in the Brown household in Baltimore, two of them boys. George was then working as a merchant in town, but, as the only child, no doubt kept his eye on the country estate in Green Spring Valley which would one day belong to him. In fact, he built a house called Fernwood nearby, and it was there in 1891 that Isabel was married only a year before her grandfather's death.

Eight years after A.D. Brown died, the 1900 census records that four of their children remained with them at the inherited estate of Brookland Wood. H. Carroll Brown (named for Fannie's grandfather, or possible for her brother, H. Carroll Winchester), was 26 by that time and working as a broker. Younger brother George, now a clerk, had been displaced as the youngest by another son, Irwin Manning Brown, born in 1884, who was destined to become a solicitor for Maury, Donnelly & Parr, an insurance company.

Alex. Brown & Sons--4th Generation

Col. A.D. Brown's youngest brother, George S. Brown, was the one who actually ran Alex. Brown & Sons during the bank's third generation of family ownership, and it was his son, Alexander Brown (born 1858), who married famed Baltimore belle, Bessie Montague, in 1883, three years after his uncle had scandalized Baltimore society by his marriage to Laura Hobson.

Isabel Brown in 1891 married James McKeney Merryman, whose best man was his older brother, David Buchanan Merryman.[1] A close link apparently existed among the Brown cousins, judging from the fact that in 1894 D. Buchanan Merryman married Bessie Love Montague, a first cousin of the banker's wife (also confusingly named Bessie Montague). Bessie Montague Merryman was to become famous as the favorite aunt of the scandalous Wallis Warfield Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor. [Refer back to the Brown tree.]

We also infer that the cousins were at least somewhat close from a 1908 news clip (inset at left) which mentions that Wallis, then married to Edward Simpson, attended a Baltimore ball given by Mrs. Henry Greenway, sister-in-law of Grace Brown Greenway. Numerous Merryman and Warfield relatives were also present at this ball, as were Alexander Brown II and his wife, Bessie Montague Brown, and George "Brook" Brown's father-in-law, H. Carroll Winchester.

Grace Brown married Edward McDonald Greenway, Jr., brother of the hostess's husband, whose uncle (John Campbell Greenway) will be discussed below). [Note: Refer back to the family tree from a previous page and other materials in Maryland archives.]

Isabel Brown Graham's husband's sister, Mrs. George Edward Bowdoin, named a son after her brother, who in gratitude brought the nephew, William Graham Bowdoin, into the Alex. Brown & Sons firm in 1871. Bowdoin remained a partner until his death in 1904. (Refer to photographs of Graham and Bowdoin in John Crosby Brown's book, A Hundred Year of Merchant Banking..., p. 52).

When George Stewart Brown retired from Alex. Brown & Sons, his own son—Alexander, Jr.—took over management of the bank but died in 1883 after only one year, after which the management of the Alex. Brown & Sons bank passed into the hands of Isabel Brown's husband's nephew and to the husbands of Alexander Brown's two daughters—all of whom had names other than Brown. Alexander's son-in-law, Benjamin Howell Griswold, Jr., would later succeed William H. Graham as head of the investment bank. Refer back to the genealogical chart above. Further discussion will appear in subsequent posts about these descendants.

Grace Brown Greenway

Lauder/Greenway mansion

Grace Brown (1825-1903) married Edward McDonald Greenway, Jr., whose banker father had been born in 1793 as one of the sons of John and Catherine McDonald Greenway of Washington County, Virginia. While Edward Sr. had set up his banking business in Baltimore, his brother, John McDonald Greenway, remained in Virginia, where his wife, the former Margaret Christian Cowan, gave birth to ten children, including six sons. The youngest , Dr. Gilbert Christian Greenway (1841-1912), lived for a time in Huntsville, Alabama, before he and his wife, the former Alice White of Kentucky, settled permanently in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Always loyal to his home state, Dr. Greenway sent all his sons back to Virginia for boarding school, then to Phillips Academy to be prepped for Yale. The sons included:

• John Campbell Greenway, born in Alabama in 1872, was a graduate of Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in the class of 1895 (Book & Snake '95). He became a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt, and during their days as Rough Riders in Cuba stormed San Juan Hill together. After the Spanish-American War, John worked for a brief time at Carnegie Steel (where his brother's father-in-law, George Lauder, was a partner) before mining in the Western Mesabi Iron Ore Range in Minnesota for a few years.
• Around 1910 he moved to Bisbee, Arizona to act as general manager of the Calumet & Arizona Mining Co and three years later acquired the New Cornelia Copper Co. for the Calumet mines. When his friend Teddy Roosevelt did not run for reelection as a Republican in 1912, Greenway helped to sponsor the National Progressive Party to nominate TR. During WWI, he went back into the Army and in 1923 married Isabella Selmes, Eleanor Roosevelt's best friend while the two young ladies were at Miss Chapin's School in New York. After serving as a bridesmaid at Eleanor and Franklin's wedding, she too was married, at the age of 19, to Robert H. Munro Ferguson, twice her age, who died in 1922.
• John died in 1926, after only three years of marriage to Isabella, leaving behind one son, John Selmes Greenway. By the time of Greenway's death, in "the late 1920s, the Calumet and Arizona Mining Co. was in dire financial straits because of its lack of capital to develop and operate its ore reserves. On Oct. 31, 1931 it merged with the Phelps Dodge Corp., becoming the New Cornelia Division of Phelps Dodge," and is today owned by Freeport-McMoran Gold and Silver Inc.
• The twice widowed Isabella Selmes Greenway was elected Congresswoman from Arizona in 1934 after serving as a member of the Democratic National Committee since 1928. During those years of political service, she hired a pilot named Charles Gilpin, purchasing his airline after his death in a crash in Mexico City in 1932. Gilpin is said to have previously worked for her husband, the "legendary Arizonan Colonel Jack Greenway." [See news clip.] Isabella hired Eleanor's son Elliott to work as the airline's manager, but it was more than the President's son could handle. [See Peter Collier's book, The Roosevelts: An American Saga.] 

• James Cowan Greenway, Sr. (Yale, Skull and Bones, 1900), who married heiress Harriet Lauder, a daughter of Scottish steel magnate, George Lauder, Andrew Carnegie's partner in founding Carnegie Steel. Harriet inherited Copper Beach Farm at Mead Point, an island southeast of Greenwich, Connecticut, at one time called the most expensive single family home for sale on record. Begun in 1896, the home's title was transferred to Harriet Lauder Greenway in 1904. Nevertheless, they also had a home at 400 Prospect in New Haven, where James was a Yale University lecturer in public health, and also served as Yale's director of the Department of University Health. As secretary of the Board of Control, he served with some of Yale's most powerful administrators. During WWI, Dr. Greenway had been named as the chief of medical service for Camp Bowie in Fort Worth, Texas.

• Gilbert C. Greenway

Since Grace Brown Greenway had no children of her own, she and her husband often traveled with her great-nieces (daughters of George "Brook" Brown) during frequent excursions to resort communities like Saratoga, Newport or Narragansett (where Samuel Bush's wife and children, Prescott Bush and siblings, spent their summers). Intrigingly, the Walker family, before acquiring a home at Kennebunk, Maine, also spent summers at Narragansett. Saratoga's racetrack was a haven for men like banker August Belmont and Pierre Lorillard, developer of the exclusive Tuxedo Park, New York enclave (northwest of New York City), where only the wealthiest of Americans could afford to live—including many Brown family relations.

Fourth Brown Generation Moves to Chicago

Following the defeat of the South in the Civil War Southern anger intensified against Eastern banking interests. While Alex. Brown continued operations in Baltimore through descendants of George Stewart and Isabella Brown, their two siblings formed strong connection to other parts of the country. Colonel Alexander Davison Brown had only one child, named George but often referred to as "Brook," likely because he grew up at the Brooklandwood estate north of Baltimore--Maryland's hunt country.

Much of Alexander’s socializing took place after 1878 at the Elkridge Hunt Club, which he co-founded with D. Buchanan Merryman, best man at the wedding between James McK. Merryman and Alexander D.’s granddaughter, Isabel Brown, in 1891. Isabel Brown Merryman thus became the sister-in-law of Wallis' “Aunt Bessie.”

Their childless great-aunt, Mrs. Edward McDonald Greenway, wife of a banker, was a frequent visitor to resorts such as Saratoga and Pimlico, often accompanied by one of her great-nieces.

Three of Brook's daughters (Fannie, Sarah and Grace) frequented Newport Society and Saratoga with their great-aunt Grace Greenway, who had no children of her own. By following the wealthy race circuit the Brown family made connections with other families of great wealth.

Brook Brown's wife was Fannie Winchester Brown, who died in 1912, leaving eight children:

• Colegate Nisbet Brown, wife of Dr. N. Ryno Smith; 
• Isabella Brown, wife of James McKeney Merryman; 
• Henry Carroll Brown, married and divorced from Margaret Daly; 
• Fannie W. Brown, wife of Walter W. Keith; 
• Sarah Carroll Brown, who married Stanley Field, nephew of Marshall Field and son of Henry Field of England; 
• George Brown, Jr., who married Elizabeth Lieper Martin; 
• Grace Greenway Brown, who married Honore Palmer; 
• Irvin Manning Brown, who married Katherine Murray Spencer

Honore Palmer was a son of Mrs. Potter Palmer, millionaire socialite who was president of the Fortnightly Club of Chicago. Honore’s deceased father had been one of Marshall Field’s partners. A daughter of the other partner, Levi Z. Leiter, married George Brown, Jr., whom she divorced in 1921.
Fannie Winchester Brown married Walter Woodruff Keith, whose family owned another Chicago retail store, Keith Bros. & Co.

Isabella Brown married James McKeney Merryman, brother of D. Buchanan Merryman. The brothers' father, John, was a farmer on an estate called Hayfields near Brooklandwood and, like Alexander Davison Brown, had fought in the civil war. John Merryman, was indicted for treason in 1861, which led to a famous Supreme Court case, Ex parte Merryman. John had inherited Hayfields farm near Cockeysville from his uncle, Nicholas M. Bosley, and then established a fertilizer business in Baltimore. Maryland's agricultural association, of which both Bosley and Merryman were members, owned the Pimlico racetrack.

Henry Carroll Brown married Margaret Daly, daughter of Marcus Daly, the "copper king".