Samuel R. Brown

Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown D.D. (June 16, 1810 – June 20, 1880) was an American missionary to China and Japan with the Reformed Church in America.

Birth and education

Brown was born in East Windsor, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale College in 1832, studied theology in Columbia, South Carolina and as a member of the first graduating class of Union Theological Seminary, and taught for four years (1834–38) at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.

China

In 1838, he went to Guangzhou and opened, for the Morrison Education Society, the first Protestant School in the Chinese Empire—a school in which were taught Yung Wing and other pupils who afterward came to the United States. The several annual reports on this school were published in The Chinese Repository for 1840 to 1846, to which he contributed some of his papers on Chinese subjects.

Return to America

After nine years' service, his wife's health failing, Brown returned to the United States and became a pastor at Sand Beach Church and teacher of boys at Owasco Outlet, near Auburn (1851–59). He worked for the formation of a college for women, which was situated first in Auburn and then in Elmira, New York and now known as Elmira College. Brown was responsible for sponsoring Yung Wing (1828–1912); the first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. university, graduating from Yale College in 1854.

Japan

When by the Harris Treaty of 1858, Kanagawa and Nagasaki in Japan were opened to trade and residence, Brown sailed for the former, arriving on November 3, 1859. On arrival, Brown shared residential accommodation with the family of the Presbyterian medical missionary Dr. James Curtis Hepburn, then residing at Jobutsuji in Kanagawa, a dilapidated temple formerly occupied by the Dutch consulate.