Samuel R. Brown

Samuel Robbins Brown (16 June 1810-20 June 1880) was an American missionary to China and Japan with the Dutch Reformed Church.

Brown was born in Connecticut, graduated from Yale in 1832, studied theology in Columbia, South Carolina, and taught for four years (1834–38) in the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.

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.

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.

When by the Townsend Harris treaty of 1858, Yokohama and Nagasaki in Japan were opened to trade and residence, Brown sailed for the former port and opened a school in which hundreds of young men, afterwards leaders in various walks of life, were educated. He translated the New Testament, and taught and preached for 20 years. He was one of the founders of the Asiatic Society of Japan and in many ways one of the most prominent makers of the new Japan. He returned to the United States in 1867 following a fire that destroyed his home, library, manuscripts, and notes.

Brown died during his sleep, while visiting an old friend in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and is buried at Monson, Massachusetts, his boyhood home.

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