Alexander Brown (author)

Alexander Brown (September 5, 1843 – August 19, 1906) was a Confederate soldier and American merchant, best known as the author of several books on the early history of Virginia.

[2] His paternal grandfather, also named Alexander Brown (1796-1864), was born near Perth, Scotland, came to Virginia in 1811,[3] studied at the College of William & Mary, then worked for his merchant uncle at Lovingston in Nelson County.

They owned slaves, including a 30 year old Black woman,[10] This Brown was raised by his grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Cabell and educated by private tutors at the "Benvenue" plantation from 1851 to 1856,[11] then from 1856 through 1860 studied at a school run by Horace W. Jones in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In the months immediately before Virginia's secession and the start of the American Civil War, Brown was studying at Lynchburg College.

[11][13] He fought for four years until he was rendered "stone deaf" in January 1865 by proximity to an exploding powder boat near Fort Fisher, North Carolina.

[1] Fort Fisher defended Wilmington, North Carolina, a crucial supply port for Robert E. Lee's forces in the war's closing months.

[14] Despite being deaf, Brown worked as a clerk in a grocery store in Washington D.C. immediately after the war (1865-1868), then in 1869 returned to Nelson County and became a farmer as well as merchant.