Hugh Stowell Brown
| Hugh Stowell Brown | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
10 August 1823 Douglas |
| Died | 24 February 1886 (aged 62) Liverpool |
| Nationality | Manx |
| Occupation | Christian minister |
Hugh Stowell Brown (10 August 1823 – 24 February 1886) was a Manx Christian minister and renowned preacher.
Hugh Stowell Brown was a preacher, pastor and social reformer in Liverpool in the nineteenth century. His public lectures and work among the poor brought him great renown. On his death a statue was raised to him, one of only three Liverpool clergymen to receive that honour. His brother was the Manx poet Thomas Edward Brown.
He was born at Douglas, Isle of Man, on 10 August 1823, was second son of Robert Brown, and his wife Dorothy (Thomson). Thomas Edward Brown was his younger brother. The father, Robert Brown (died 1846), was at one time master of the grammar school in Douglas, and in 1817 became chaplain of St. Matthew's chapel in that town. An evangelical of extreme views, he never read the Athanasian Creed, and took no notice of Ash Wednesday or Lent. In 1832, he became curate of Kirk Braddan, succeeding as vicar on 2 April 1836. He learned Manx in order to preach in it, and supported a family of nine on less than £200 a year. His boys spent the summers in collecting his tithes of hay and corn, intermittently walking five miles to Douglas grammar school, but Hugh's early education consisted chiefly in reading four or five hours daily to his father, who became almost blind. Robert Brown was found dead by the roadside on 28 November 1846, and buried next day at Kirk Braddan. He wrote twenty-two Sermons on various Subjects, Wellington (Shropshire) and London, 1818, 8vo; and a volume of Poems, principally Sacred, London, 1826.
Hugh was apprenticed when fifteen to a land surveyor, and employed in tithe commutation and ordnance surveys in Cheshire, Shrewsbury, and York. In 1840, he entered the London and Birmingham Railway's works at Wolverton, Buckinghamshire. While earning from four to eight shillings a week he began to study Greek, chalking his first exercises on a fire-box. After three years, part of the time spent in driving a locomotive between Crewe and Wolverton, he returned home and entered King William's College at Castletown to study for the church. When his training was almost complete he felt unable to subscribe to the ordination service, and resolved to return to his trade; but in the meantime was baptised at Stony Stratford, lost his father, and received unexpectedly an invitation to preach at Myrtle Street Baptist Chapel, Liverpool. About November 1847, he was accepted by that congregation as their minister. He was then twenty-four. There he remained until his death, winning great popularity as a preacher.
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