Morgan Welles Brown

Who was Morgan Welles Brown?

Morgan Welles Brown was a United States federal judge.

Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, and named after his father Dr. Morgan Brown IV, his mother was the former Elizabeth Little. His parents had migrated from Grassy Island on the Peedee River in Anson County, North Carolina, where his father had been born, to Tennessee in 1795. They first settled on the Cumberland River where his father established the town and port of entry of Palmyra in Montgomery County and was made Collector for the District of Tennessee.

Morgan Welles Brown read law in the offices of his elder brother William Little Brown who had served as Solicitor General of Tennessee and as Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals and Errors of the State of Tennessee.

Admitted to the bar sometime prior to his elder brother's death in 1830, Morgan Welles Brown had established a private practice in Nashville, Tennessee by 1833. He was also a newspaper editor for one of the leading Nashville newspapers, the Nashville Republican, from 1832 to 1833. He was described as a man "of considerable reading and literary tastes, a fine miscellaneous writer . . . and a gentleman of polished manners and high social qualities."