In 1896 the predominantly Republican Legislature elected him and Frank J. Cannon as Utah's first U.S. senators, an office sought by many prominent men as it was the great political prize of statehood.

Brown was also the second cousin of future President Calvin Coolidge[4] and a member of the Phillips Congregational Church, in Salt Lake City.

Bradley assumed Brown was having a second affair with Kiskadden and confronted him at The Raleigh Hotel on 12th Street near Pennsylvania Avenue.

Brown died from his wounds four days later, at age 63, and was interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City.

[7] At trial, it was revealed that Brown's will renounced Bradley and the two sons she claimed he sired, and a sympathetic jury acquitted her due to temporary insanity.