[3] By 23, he and a fellow clerk established their start-up grocery business which later started to import large quantities of sugar, molasses, and rum from the West Indies.
Greely and Guild were heavily involved in the West Indies trade and imported a large quantity of molasses.
This company was involved in the importation of slave-produced sugar from the Caribbean and the processing of it into rum and molasses.
The business was not successful in its early years because it was unable to produce the required granulation using known processes.
However, it became lucrative after Brown's agent, Dependence H. Furbush, developed a process that used steam power to extract a sugar from molasses.
[9] Brown was the president of the Portland Savings Bank, Portland Board of Trade, and Maine General Hospital, an incorporator of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, a trustee of Bowdoin College, and a director of a number of other businesses, including the Maine Central Railroad Company.
The lawyers arrived on horseback via Bowdoin Street in the middle of the night and brought Brown's will to his bedside.
[3] After his death, his sons Philip Henry and John Marshall constructed the Brown Memorial Building at Congress and Casco Streets in 1883.