BROWN, JAMES (1845-1903)

BROWN, JAMES, general merchant; b. Portsoy, Banffshire, Scotland, 28 Feb 1845, s/o James Brown Sr and Janet Taylor; unmarried; d. Montreal, 19 Nov 1903.

James ("Scotty") Brown, the son of a Banffshire grain merchant, apprenticed in a ship-chandlery establishment in his hometown of Portsoy, Scotland, until age nineteen. He then came to the Miramichi and took a job as a sales clerk in Newcastle. In 1870 he opened his own store. He described himself in his advertisements as an importer of "dry-goods, clothing, hats, caps, trunks, valises, choice groceries, jewelry, hardware, boots and shoes, paint, oils, guns, revolvers, violins, etc." He referred to his store as "The Cheap Cash Store," and he conducted it personally until he was overtaken by illness in the 1890s.

In 1879 Brown was the veterinary surgeon of the Newcastle Field Battery. In 1894 he was elected president of the reorganized "Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association and Board of Trade for the Town and Parish of Newcastle" (which was later known simply as the Newcastle Board of Trade). He resigned the presidency a few months later, probably for health reasons. In 1896 he was joined in business by a nephew from Scotland, Alexander H. MacKay, who became his successor when he died in a Montreal sanitorium in 1903, at age fifty-eight.