Solomon G. Brown
1829–1906

Inventor, lecturer, naturalist, poet

Solomon G. Brown was as self-educated man, whose gifted intellect, hard work, creativity, and inventive spirit endowed him with a versatile public career. He helped Samuel F. Morse develop the telegraph and became the first African American employed by the Smithsonian Institute. Brown's expertise as a naturalist and his talent as an illustrator made him a highly desirable lecturer in his day. Brown was also a published poet and a local legislator. While his is not quite a rags to riches story, it is nevertheless a fascinating one about what one determined black man with meager beginnings can accomplish with a strong intellect and a willingness to seize opportunities to enhance his education and advance his professional status. As his careers developed, Brown always reached back to extend a hand to other African Americans who were less fortunate and to do what he could to improve their plight.

Solomon G. Brown was born to Isaac and Rachel Brown on February 14, 1829. The fourth son of six children, Brown was born a free black, because both of his parents were free Negroes. The family resided in Washington, D.C., living on very modest means. Brown was deprived of formal education because when his father died in 1833, his mother was left defenseless against creditors who made false claims of indebtedness on the family's estate. The year after Brown's father died, bill collectors seized all of his family's property and left the family destitute.

Begins Post Office Career

In 1844 Brown was lucky enough to be apprenticed to Lambert Tree, the assistant postmaster for the District of Columbia. The next year he was assigned to assist Joseph Henry, Samuel F Morse, and Alfred Vail with the development of a new invention that would constitute the genesis of the modern telecommunication industry and become one of the pinnacles of the industrial revolution in the United States: the electric telegraph. Brown functioned as a technician and assisted his supervisors with installing the wiring necessary for the telegraph to perform efficiently. After Samuel F Morse successfully transmitted his Morse code, a series of dots and dashes forming words, from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, the telegraph became the new sensation. Brown continued to work with the new communications innovation, even after it was sold to the Morse Telegraph Company.

In the Solomon G. Brown biographical essay that appears in Men of Mark, the author laments that Morse went on to garner accolades, fame, and wealth, but the contribution of the "negro[sic] who materially assisted" Morse with getting the project started has largely been ignored. Robert C. Hayden, in the Dictionary of American Negro Biography, speculates that Brown actually wrote this essay himself, and if that is true, the passage reveals that Brown was acutely aware of the fact that his skin color may have kept him from receiving proper recognition for his contribution to the invention of the telegraph.

Chronology

1829

Born in the District of Columbia on February 14

1833

Father dies and leaves family penniless

1844

Assigned to work with Lambert Tree, assistant postmaster for Washington, D.C., which leads to work with Samuel B. Morse on the telegraph

1852

Begins work at the Foreign Exchange Division of the Smithsonian Institute; launches career as lecturer

1855

Delivers first lecture to the Young People's Literary Society

1864

Marries wife Lucinda

1871

Elected the first of three times to District of Columbia legislature

1887

Retires from travel and lecturing

1906

Retires from the Smithsonian; dies in Washington, D.C. on June 24

Brown accepted a position as battery tender with the fledgling Morse Company but later moved on to become an assistant packer at Gillman and Brothers Manufactory, a chemical laboratory. While working at the laboratory Brown discovered that he had a talent for painting and coloring maps and other illustrations. His artistic side evolved when he mounted and painted maps for two laboratory clients, the General Land Office and a book binder.

A self-taught individual in the purest sense of the phrase, Brown was one of those rare people who achieved more that one thought he could, given his social status and lack of formal schooling. He was born with a natural ability for science and art, and he was hard working and ambitious. He learned whatever he could from each of his employers and intelligently applied his education in ways that advanced him socially, economically, and politically.

Becomes Smithsonian's First Black Hire

Although he thoroughly enjoyed his work, Brown left the laboratory position in 1852 to work in the Foreign Exchange Division of the newly opened Smithsonian Institute. The first secretary of the Smithsonian was Joseph Henry, the same electrical engineer with whom Brown had worked at the post office, so the two men had a previous work relationship, and similar roles in the early days of working with Samuel F. Morse and the invention of the telegraph, all in common.

Brown holds the unique distinction of being the first African American hired to work at the Smithsonian Institute. In June 2004, during the one-hundred-year anniversary celebration of the founding of the Museum of Natural History, which was attended by some of Brown's descendants, his contributions to the Smithsonian were honored by the planting of a Lebanon tree on the museum grounds. Christian T. Samper, the museum's director, noted that Brown was present at the museum's original ground breaking.

When Brown was hired by the Smithsonian, he found his niche and his lifelong avocation. He remained with the Smithsonian for fifty-four years and held several positions. He started at the bottom rung with manual labor tasks such as building exhibit cases, was promoted to clerical positions, and finally obtained the position of naturalist. Over the years, he absorbed and compiled a plethora of information on natural history. He then synthesized his knowledge with his artistic experiences and began lecturing before various audiences in the District of Columbia area, demonstrating with his own illustrations on a variety of topics.

Brown's very first lecture occurred on January 10, 1855 at the invitation of the Young People's Literary Society and Lyceum at the Israel Church in Washington, D.C. With a dazzling display of forty-nine different drawings, Brown captivated the audience with his expertise on the subject of the social habits of insects. This lecture proved so popular he was called upon to repeat it in surrounding cities such as Baltimore, Georgetown, and Alexandria. Encouraged by the demand for his informative speaking engagements, Brown expanded his repertoire and delivered addresses on water, air, food, coal, mineralogy, fungi, plant embryos, and geology.

For his first lecture on geology, presented to a packed audience at the 1883 Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Washington, D.C, he used twenty-nine of his own large illustrations, including one on geologic strata formations. Then, too, Brown's selection of subjects was not limited to natural phenomena. He enlightened his audiences on philosophical, religious, and educational topics, including "God's Providence to Man," "Early Educators of D.C," Man's Relations to Earth," and the telegraph. He continued to travel and lecture until 1887.

Brown served under two other secretaries of the Smithsonian, Spencer F. Baird and Samuel P. Langley. When Baird would leave Washington, D.C. during the summers for his family vacation, Brown would conscientiously write him letters, keeping his supervisor abreast of the daily affairs of the Smithsonian, as well as events happening in the city. One letter to Baird dated July 15, 1864, reported that Confederate Army Rebels were threatening the city and that the museum had very few visitors.

On June 16, 1864, when he was a museum assistant, Brown married his wife, Lucinda, who then became his devoted companion and an enthusiastic helpmate, nurturing his enterprising spirit and aspirations. The couple had no children of their own but mentored several young women. In 1869, Brown changed Smithsonian jobs again and assumed responsibility for the registration, transportation, and storage of museum materials and resources.

A nineteenth-century renaissance man, Brown also possessed literary talent and became a published poet. He performed poetry readings and his poems were published in a local African American newspaper, the Washington Bee. In 1983, Louise Daniel Hutchinson and Gail Sylvia Lowe compiled his poetry into a book entitled Kind Regards of S. G. Brown: Selected Poems of Solomon G. Brown. It was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press.

Brown was socially active and involved in his community's political, educational, and religious activities. He held trusteeships with Wilberforce University, the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, and the Washington, D.C. public school system. He was a Sunday School superintendent and helped found the Pioneer Sunday School. He was grand secretary of the District Grand Lodge of Masons, a member of the Freeman's Relief Association, president of National Union League (1866), director of the Industrial Saving and Building Association, editor of the Sunday School Circle of the Christian Index, and the Washington correspondent for the Anglo-African Christian Recorder. He served as a commissioner for the poor and, beginning in 1871, was elected three times to the District of Columbia legislature. The 1878 minutes of the Negro Society show that Brown was admitted as a member at its meeting on January 19; how-ever, none of the subsequent published minutes demonstrates that he ever attended a meeting.

Solomon G. Brown retired from the Smithsonian Institute on his birthday, February 14, 1906. He was seventy-seven years old and had lived life to the fullest. He died at his home five months later, on June 24. A brilliant man with so many accomplishments in different fields of endeavor, Brown left a legacy of service, entrepreneur-ship, and embracing all life had to offer a man of his class and his race in the late nineteenth century. Brown is best remembered by many historians as the first African American employee of the Smithsonian Institute, but he made other lasting contributions with the telegraph, his natural history lectures, his poetry, and his long record of unselfish public service.

REFERENCES

Books

Brawley, Benjamin. Negro Builders and Heroes. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1937.

Logan, Rayford W., and Michael R. Winston. Dictionary of American Negro Biography. New York: Norton, 1982.

Sammons, Vivian Ovelton. Blacks in Science and Medicine. New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corp., 1990.

Simmons, William J. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive, Rising. New York: Arno Press, 1968.

Webster, Raymond. African American Firsts in Science and Technology. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Group, 1999.

Periodicals

Cromwell, W., N. Thomas, and F. G. Barbadoes. "Adjourned Meeting of the Negro Society." Journal of Negro History 64 (Winter 1979): 63-69.

Online

Schmid, Randolph E. "Smithsonian Celebrates 100 Years." CBSNEWS.com. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/16/national/main623517.shtml (Accessed 31 January 2005)

"Solomon G. Brown: First African American Employee at the Smithsonian." Smithsonian Scrapbook: Letters, Diaries & Photographs from the Smithsonian Archives. http://www.si.edu/archives/documents/brown2.htm (Accessed 31 January 2005).

"Solomon G. Brown: Letter dated July 15, 1864." Smithsonian Scrapbook: Letters, Diaries & Photographs from the Smithsonian Archives. http://www.si.edu/archives/documents/brownjuly1864.htm (Accessed 31 January 2005).

                                    Glenda M. Alvin