John Brown was born into the Tiger Clan of his Seminole mother, Lucy Nancy Greybeard, on October 23, 1842, near Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.

He was of mixed race and was the eldest child of seven; their father was Dr. John Frippo Brown, Sr., a physician from Scotland.

He had six siblings, including Alice Brown Davis, who in 1922 was appointed as the Seminoles' first woman chief.

His 15-year-old sister Alice moved from their home near Fort Gibson to Wewoka, Oklahoma to live with him.

[1] Brown negotiated the Seminole agreement with the Dawes Commission in 1897, which preceded the division of communal land into plots for separate households, as part of a plan for assimilation to majority culture.

[1] He married Lizzie Jumper, whose father served as chief of the Seminole shortly after the Civil War.