Thomas Brown

Who is Thomas Brown?

Thomas Brown, was the colonial era husbandman, businessman, and land speculator who along with his brother Basil acquired the bulk of the lands towards the end of the American Revolution from non-other than the somewhat infamous Thomas Cresap, early enough to sell plots to Jacob Bowman in 1780 and Jacob Yoder who respectively made business firsts in 1780 and 1782; Jacob Bowman founded a trading post and tavern. Yoder got in a crop big enough to ship to New Orleans and invented the flat boat on Redstone Creek, inaugurating the water craft construction businesses which made the town an industrial powerhouse for the next seventy years.

When Brown traveled to or actually purchased the lands is murky, but it is accepted he formally founded the town of Brownsville, Pennsylvania in 1785, and he was further documented as personally laying out plots and boundaries himself at the age of 47 in that same year then advertising them for sale 'back east'. Based on his sales to Bowman and Yoder, he apparently had been selling lots for all the 1780s, before 1785.

His lands were in the area generally called Redstone or Redstone Fort or Redstone Old Fort or sometimes Fort Burd.