CLASS OF 1870
President Francis Brown of Union Theological Seminary died October 15 at his home in New York city of heart disease.
Dr. Brown was born in Hanover,; December 26, 1849, his parents being Samuel Gilman and Sarah (Van Vechten) Brown. His father, a graduate of Dartmouth in 1831, was at this time professor of oratory and belles lettres in the College, and was later president of Hamilton College. His grandfather, the first Francis Brown, was the third president of Dartmouth.
His preparation for college was obtained at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and Phi Beta Kappa. He maintained a distinguished rank for scholarship, and graduated as valedictorian.
For the first two years after graduation he taught in Ayers Latin School, Pittsburgh, Pa., and was then for two years tutor in Greek at Dartmouth. Next followed a three years' course in Union Theological Seminary, and, after his graduation there in 1877, two years of study at Berlin as a fellow of the Seminary. He then returned to the Seminary as instructor in biblical philology; in 1881 he became associate professor in the same department, and in November, 1890, professor, of Hebrew and the cognate languages. In 1908. he became also president of the Seminary. In 1907-8 he was for a year director of the American School for Oriental Study and Research at Jerusalem.
He was made a Doctor of Philosophy by Hamilton College in 1884; Doctor of Divinity by Dartmouth in 1884, by Yale in 1894, by Glasgow University in 1901, by Williams in 1908, and by Harvard in 1909; Doctor of Letters by Oxford in 1901; and Doctor of Laws by Dartmouth in 1901.
August 7, 1879, Dr. Brown was married to Louise Reiss of Berlin, Germany, who survives him. Their children are Julius Arthur (Dartmouth '02), professor in the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut; Natalie de Froideville, the wife of Rev. James M. Henry of Canton, China; and Elizabeth Gilman, the wife of Rev. Otis T. Barnes of Chappaqua, N. Y.
President Brown's great services to learning and to education are treated in another department of THE MAGAZINE. To the writer he will always be "Tutor Brown," one of the best beloved instructors of his freshman year.
