William Robinson Brown

William Robinson Brown
File:William Robinson Brown.png W. R. Brown
Born	(1875-01-17)January 17, 1875 Portland, Maine, U.S.
Died	August 4, 1955(1955-08-04) (aged 80) Dublin, New Hampshire
Occupation(s)	Brown Company, Woods Division Manager
Known for	Forestry management Arabian horse breeder
Spouse	Hildreth Burton Smith
Children	Newell Brown Fielding Brown Nancy Brown Brenton Brown Frances H. Townes (nee Brown)
Relatives	Herbert Jenkins "H.J." Brown Orton Bishop "O.B." Brown

William Robinson Brown (January 17, 1875 – August 4, 1955), known as W. R. Brown, was a corporate officer of the Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire. He was also a noted horse breeder, the founder and owner of the Maynesboro Stud, and an authority on Arabian horses. After graduating from Williams College he went to work for the family corporation, then known as the Berlin Mills Company, and soon became manager of the Woods Products Division, overseeing 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of woodlands and the loggers who worked them. Brown became an early advocate for sustainable forest management practices and served on the boards of several forestry organizations, and on the New Hampshire Forestry Commission from 1909 until 1952. Berlin Mills changed its name to the Brown Company during World War I, and Brown, in his capacity as chair of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission, helped send sawmills to Europe to assist the war effort. Brown was influenced by the Progressive movement in his approach to business, instituting employee benefits such as company-sponsored care for injured workers before modern Workers' Compensation laws. As a Republican, he served as a presidential elector for New Hampshire in 1924.

Brown founded the Maynesboro Stud in 1912, beginning with foundation bloodstock from some of the most notable contemporary American breeders of Arabian horses before looking abroad for additional horses, particularly from the Crabbet Arabian Stud in England. He traveled worldwide and imported Arabian horses from England, France and Egypt. In 1929, he wrote The Horse of the Desert, still considered an authoritative work on the Arabian breed. He served as President of the Arabian Horse Club of America from 1918 until 1939. At its peak, Maynesboro was the largest Arabian horse breeding operation in the United States. Brown was a remount agent and had a special interest in promoting the use of Arabian horses by the U.S. Army Remount Service, providing many of his own stallions to sire remounts. To prove the abilities of Arabians, he organized and participated in a number of endurance races. His horses won races of up to 300 miles multiple times, retiring the U.S. Mounted Service Cup, even though The Jockey Club donated $50,000 to the U.S. Army to buy Thoroughbreds that tried but failed to beat the Arabians.

Despite the entire Brown family selling personal assets to keep the Brown Company afloat during the Great Depression, including Brown's dispersal of his herd of Arabian horses in 1933, the business went into receivership in 1934. Brown remained in charge of the Woods Division through the company's second bankruptcy filing in 1941. He retired from the company in 1943 and died of cancer in 1955. His final book, Our Forest Heritage, was published posthumously, and his innovations in forest management became industry standards. Brown's legacy as a horse breeder was significant. Today, the term "CMK", meaning "Crabbet/Maynesboro/Kellogg" is a label for specific lines of "Domestic" or "American-bred" Arabian horses, many of which descend from Brown's breeding program. His stallion barn at Maynesboro was moved from its original location and restored by the Berlin and Coös County Historical Society, which in 2012 held a 100th anniversary celebration of the stud's founding.

Personal life

W. R. Brown was born in Portland, Maine in 1875 to Emily Jenkins Brown and William Wentworth "W. W." Brown. He was the youngest of the couple's three sons. All three boys were avid horsemen. He attended Phillips Andover Academy, and graduated from Williams College in 1897, where he had been a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity and manager of the football and baseball teams. He married Hildreth Burton Smith in 1915. She was the granddaughter of former governor of Georgia, U.S. Senator and Confederate general John B. Gordon. They had five children: Fielding, Newell, Brenton, Nancy, and Frances. Brown lived in New Hampshire for the remainder of his life, in Berlin until 1946 and then Dublin. He died of cancer on August 4, 1955, following a long illness, and was buried at the Dublin, NH cemetery. He was survived by his wife, his five grown children and 15 grandchildren.

Aligned politically with the Republican party, W. R. Brown was a presidential elector for New Hampshire in the 1924 election. The Brown family was strongly affiliated with Williams College; W.R. and his brothers Herbert ("H.J.") and Orton ("O.B.") all attended Williams, as did sons Fielding and Brenton. Fielding went on to earn a PhD at Princeton University and was Charles L. MacMillan Professor of Physics at Williams College before retiring to become an artist and sculptor. Daughter Frances married Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes, and wrote a book, Misadventures of a Scientist's Wife, about the experience. Newell attended Princeton and served as the Federal Wages and Hours Administrator for the United States Department of Labor during the Eisenhower administration.

Brown Company career

Main article: Brown Company

The Berlin Mills Company was founded in 1853. W. W. Brown purchased an interest in 1868, and by the 1880s, he and other family members had obtained 100 percent control of the company. In 1881, the company expanded its pulp and paper manufacturing. By 1907, W. W. Brown and his older two sons, H.J. and O.B., were the sole owners. The corporation name was changed to the Brown Company in 1917, removing the word "Berlin" because of the conflict with Germany in World War I.

W. R. Brown went to work for the company after finishing college, and managed the company's woods operations from 1900 until 1943. He was an officer of the corporation for 47 years. At the time he began his career, the company owned 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of land. He managed the company's timberlands for 30 years. Brown was interested in the principles of scientific forest management. During his tenure, the company was one of the first to initiate modern forest management practices, and to attempt to conserve the forest for industry. Brown was particularly critical of the damage done by portable sawmills. He built upon the sustainable forestry practices advocated by company forester Austin Cary, who had been recruited from the U.S. Forest Service. In 1919, Brown set up a tree nursery on the north shore of Cupsuptic Lake that researched sustained yield practices, and was at its peak the largest tree nursery in the United States. He understood that pulp mills in his time were especially dependent upon locally accessible timber and therefore sustainable practices were important to the industry. His innovations in forest management became industry standards. Researchers at Plymouth State College concluded that he "led the Brown company to international prominence as a source for scientific research and development."

Brown was influenced by the Progressive movement as applied to business. He paid his workers above the prevailing wage, instituted safety programs, hired a doctor to care for loggers in the camps, and, prior to modern Workers' Compensation laws, had the company pay for hospitalization of injured workers. He also attempted to improve camp conditions for the workers by banning card games and requiring the loggers to take showers, but those particular reform efforts "were not well-received."

Brown also helped found a number of civic and business self-help organizations including the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, established in 1901; the New Hampshire Timberlands Owners Association, a fire-protection group established in 1911; and similar fire-protection groups in Maine and Vermont. He set up a series of effective forest-fire lookout towers, possibly the first in the nation, and by 1917 had helped establish a forest-fire insurance company. In 1909, he became a member of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission, and served as chair from 1910 until 1952, playing a significant role in shaping the forestry practices and laws of the state. Brown also served on the boards of several industry groups, including the American Forestry Association, Society of American Foresters, Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, and the Forest Research Council. He represented the U.S. at the first World Forestry Congress held in Rome in 1926.

During World War I, in his capacity as chair of the New England Forestry Commission, Brown worked in cooperation with the War Industries Board to send 10 sawmills abroad 1917. The equipment went to Scotland to meet the Britain's need for more lumber. When the war effort in France subsequently required more than 73 million board feet of lumber per month, Brown was commissioned as a major in order to oversee sawmill operations in France, but ultimately was not allowed to serve abroad because of his poor vision.

The Great Depression had a significant impact on the Brown Company. Reduced demand for the company's products forced it to take out short-term loans to provide operating capital. By 1931, the international financial crisis had resulted in major losses in the value of the company's bonds. The Woods Division normally employed 4,000 to 5,000 loggers to cut timber each winter, but could not finance its logging operations in the winer of 1931-1932. Family members sold off personal holdings, including Brown's Arabian horses, to help keep the company solvent. In spite of these efforts, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy, going into receivership in 1934. A court-appointed president took over. Brown continued as head of the Woods Division under the new management, overseeing a period of significant technological change. In 1933, Brown negotiated a cooperative financing plan with the City of Berlin and the State of New Hampshire, ratified by the state legislature, to fund the woods operations and keep the loggers employed. The agreement lasted until 1941, when the company again filed for bankruptcy. Ultimately the Brown family ceased to have a significant role on the board of directors and the company was sold to outside investors. Brown officially retired from the company in 1943, but his brother Orton remained on the board of directors until 1960.

Arabian horse breeder

File:W.R. Brown riding an Arabian horse.png

Brown on an Arabian horse, 1919

Brown bought his first Arabian horses in 1910, and founded the Maynesboro Stud near Berlin in 1912. The farm was named after the original settlement in the area, Maynesborough, located in the White Mountains in an area also known as the Great North Woods Region. The main stallion barn, although moved from its original location, has been preserved and restored by the Berlin and Coös County Historical Society, which is also restoring the work horse barns of the Brown Company. On September 15, 2012 the society celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Maynesboro Stud.

At its peak, Maynesboro was the largest Arabian stud farm in the United States. In 1919, Brown had 88 horses, some at his main farm in New Hampshire, and others at farms he owned in Decorah, Iowa and Cody, Wyoming. He also served as President of the Arabian Horse Club of America, now part of the Arabian Horse Association, from 1918 until 1939. He is credited as the breeder of 194 horses, and became known as one of the most knowledgeable breeders and authorities on Arabians.

Foundation stock

As he built Maynesboro, Brown studied the pedigrees of almost every purebred Arabian in the USA at the time. He believed the Arabian was actually a separate subspecies of horse, a once-popular but now discredited theory. He found that, even though developed in the desert, Arabians adapted well to the severe winter weather of the region.

When he started Maynesboro, Brown obtained his original foundation bloodstock from his oldest brother, Herbert, who had purchased *Abu Zeyd, a stallion bred by the Crabbet Arabian Stud in England. *Abu Zeyd was considered the best son of his famous sire, Mesaoud. Herbert Brown obtained the stallion from the estate of Homer Davenport following Davenport's death in 1912. The Maynesboro stud also acquired 10 mares from the Davenport estate. Brown considered *Abu Zeyd an ideal representative of the Arabian breed, and when the stallion died, Brown donated the skeleton to the American Museum of Natural History. His other American purchases included most of the horses owned by Spencer Borden's Interlachen Farms in Massachusetts, following Borden's decision to disperse his herd. These horses included animals descended from the breeding program of Randolph Huntington, one of the first people in the United States to breed purebred Arabians. Brown also obtained Borden's extensive collection of literary works on horsemanship, Arab culture and the Arabian horse, which included 8th-century Furusiyya manuscripts. Following this start, he looked abroad for additional bloodstock, eventually importing 33 horses into the United States.

International purchases

Many American breeders had purchased horses from Crabbet, which at the time Brown founded Maynesboro was owned by Lady Anne Blunt and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Brown had begun corresponding with Lady Anne in 1916, and respected her love and knowledge of the Arabian horse, describing her favorably as “a true scientist”. American breeders, including Brown, obtained some of Crabbet's best Arabians during the early 1900s owing to the turmoil within the Blunt family. The Blunts had legally separated in 1906, leaving ownership of the horses in some disarray; then Lady Anne had passed away in 1917, leaving the Blunt's adult daughter, Judith, Lady Wentworth, in a rancorous and expensive estate battle with Wilfrid over the Crabbet lands and horses. Wilfrid, needing to appease creditors, sold many of the stud’s best horses to international buyers for low prices. Through an agent, Brown purchased a total of 20 Crabbet-bred horses from Wilfrid Blunt in 1918, although for reasons unknown, only 17 actually made it to Maynesboro; he paid Blunt only £2727 for the entire lot. The most significant animal purchased was the well-known stallion *Berk, who died in America after siring only four foals, much to the dismay of Lady Wentworth, who was trying to buy back some of the best breeding stock lost to Crabbet because of her father's actions. In 1921, Brown established correspondence with Lady Wentworth, the two exchanging over 35 letters over the course of several years. However, he did not like her as well as Lady Anne; he found it difficult to get a straightforward assessment of her stock. He was frustrated by her excessively favorable descriptions of her own horses combined with her harsh criticism of everyone else’s. He believed she was simply trying to sell him as many horses as possible and that her prices were too high. He bought two additional Crabbet-bred horses from England in 1923, though not directly from Lady Wentworth.

One of the most notable Crabbet-bred stallions Brown eventually kept at Maynesboro was *Astraled, who had come to America in 1909. This horse had been sold by Wilfrid Blunt to another American buyer, but following importation had lived in obscurity on the west coast, producing few purebred Arabian offspring. The stallion was sold to the remount service and was ultimately obtained by Brown in 1923, whereupon he shipped the aged horse by rail from Idaho to New Hampshire, a journey notable for taking a long 21 days. *Astraled only sired one foal crop at Maynesboro before the horse died, but that group of foals included his most notable American-bred son, Gulastra.

Brown traveled to Europe with the U.S. Army Remount Service in 1921, visiting a number of major European studs in Austria, France, and Hungary. He met Lady Wentworth at Crabbet on the way home, but did not purchase any of her horses. He imported several Arabian mares from France in 1921 and 1922, in part owing to France's reputation for producing excellent cavalry horses.

In 1929, he traveled with Arabian expert Carl Raswan to Egypt and Syria to look for desertbred horses. According to Brown’s wife, the two apparently did not get along well, and the five horses purchased during their journey somehow never made it to America. Following that uncomfortable trip, Brown wrote The Horse of the Desert, still considered to be one of the best works written about the Arabian horse.

In 1932, Brown sent his stud manager Jack Humphrey to Egypt, where acting for Brown he bought two stallions and four mares from Prince Mohammed Ali. The Prince was known as a horseman and scholar, publishing a two-volume treatise on the breeding of Arabian horses. Two of the mares purchased were daughters of Mahroussa, whom Brown described as "the most beautiful mare he ever saw". The stallions were *Nasr, a successful race horse, and *Zarife.

Endurance testing and remounts

Brown was a remount agent, who served on the U.S. Remount Board, and his interest in improving the quality of horses used by the U.S. Cavalry may have been his motivation to breed Arabians. Spencer Borden shared Brown's interest in Arabians as remount bloodstock. Seeking to prove the superior endurance and durability of Arabian horses to the U.S. Army Remount Service, Brown actively encouraged the participation of Arabians in endurance races. Brown had most of his horses trained to ride and drive. Many were used in endurance races, others shown, and at least one was a polo pony.

In 1918, he performed a test in which he had two of his horses travel from Berlin to Bethel, Maine, a distance of 162 miles (261 km). They completed the ride in just over 31 hours including breaks, with each horse carrying 200 pounds (91 kg) in poor weather and on muddy roads. The horses were Kheyra, a purebred seven-year-old mare who weighed 900 pounds (410 kg), and Rustem Bey, a half-Arab by Khaled out of a Standardbred mare of the Clay Trotting Horses line. Rustem Bey was taller and heavier than Kheyra. Both horses were examined by a veterinarian, assessed as being sound and fit to continue at the end of the ride, and showed no evidence of soreness 24 hours later. A third Arabian, Herbert Brown's *Crabbet, was ridden by a military officer supervising the test, and that pair covered 95 miles (153 km) in seventeen hours. The results were reported in The New York Times.

Following the 1918 test, Brown helped organize the first U.S. Official Cavalry Endurance Ride in 1919, winning it with his mare Ramla, who carried 200 pounds (91 kg). The race covered 306 miles (492 km) in five days. The U.S. Remount Service requested the weight horses carried in 1920 be raised to 245 pounds (111 kg), and required horses to travel for about 60 miles (97 km) a day for five days. Arabians won the highest average points of any breed, and although an Arabian horse did not win first place that year, Rustem Bey was second. In 1921, with a weight requirement of 225 pounds (102 kg), again covering 300 miles (480 km) in five days, Brown's gelding *Crabbet won the race and Rustem Bey was third, despite a donation of $50,000 from The Jockey Club to the Army to buy the best Thoroughbreds possible in a failed attempt to beat the Arabians. Brown won again in 1923 with an Anglo-Arabian named Gouya, thus retiring the U.S. Mounted Service Cup.

Brown used Arabian stallions owned by the remount service as breeding animals, and over time also provided 32 of his own stallions to sire remounts. He advocated crossbreeding Arabians to improve other breeds. However, he concluded that attempting to breed purebred Arabians for increased size resulted in a sacrifice in quality and Arabian type.

Dispersal

Brown sold all his horses in 1933 in an attempt to raise funds to keep the Brown Company solvent at the time the company was entering bankruptcy. The horses were sold to the Kellogg Ranch, Roger Selby, William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon Stud, and "General" J. M. Dickinson of Traveler's Rest Stud, who acquired most of the horses from Brown's 1932 importation from Egypt. Dickinson in turn sold *Zarife to Wayne Van Vleet of Colorado in 1939; and sold Azkar, the last foal bred by Brown, to a ranch in Texas. There Azkar was left to fend for himself on the open range as a herd stallion, but, a testament to the hardiness of Brown's Arabians, survived and was subsequently purchased and returned to the Arabian breeding world by Henry Babson. Dickinson sold the mare *Aziza to Alice Payne, who later owned *Raffles.

Legacy

Mr. and Mrs. Brown, 1954

Brown believed it was important to preserve the scenic value of New Hampshire's forests. Among his many civic activities, Brown promoted early legislative efforts to protect public riding trails. He also helped New Hampshire acquire Franconia Notch and Crawford Notch as public lands, and established a river conservation group in Quebec.

A scholar of the Arabian horse, he collected a significant library of works on Arabians, one of the largest collections in the United States. His papers are now kept by the Arabian Horse Owners Foundation (AHOF). Today, the term "CMK", meaning "Crabbet/Maynesboro/Kellogg" is a label for specific lines of "Domestic" or "American-bred" Arabian horses. It describes the descendants of horses imported to America from the desert or from Crabbet Park Stud in the late 1800s and early 1900s and then bred on in the US by the Hamidie Society, Huntington, Borden, Davenport, Brown, W. K. Kellogg, Hearst, or Dickinson.

Bibliography

Brown authored the following works:

• — (1929). The Horse of the Desert (1st ed.). New York: Derrydale Press. p. 218. OCLC 2438208., republished in 1947, considered an authoritative work on the Arabian horse.
• — (1958). Our Forest Heritage: A History of Forestry and Recreation in New Hampshire. Concord, N.H.: Derrydale Press. OCLC 2197078., published posthumously.

Sources

• "Certificates issued". Portsmouth Herald. Portsmouth, NH. December 11, 1924. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |people= (help)
• Churchill, P. W. (1955). "W. R. Brown: Modern pioneer" (PDF). The Brown Bulletin. 4 (2): 3, 10–11.
• Conn, George H. (1957). The Arabian Horse in America. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company. ISBN 978-0498010934 (1972 revised edition). OCLC 2650806. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |lc= ignored (help)
• Defebaugh, James Elliott (1097). History of the Lumber Industry of America. Vol. 2. American Lumbermen. p. 70.
• Edwards, Gladys Brown (1973). The Arabian: War Horse to Show Horse (Revised Collector's ed.). Covina, California: Rich Publishing. ISBN 978-0938276005. OCLC 1148763. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lc= ignored (help)
• Forbis, Judith (1976). The Classic Arabian Horse. New York: W. W. Norton &Company. ISBN 978-0-87140-612-5. OCLC 1945650.
• Magid, Arlene (2009). "How to Read a Pedigree". Retrieved September 7, 2012.
• Uphem-Bornstein, Linda; DeGrandprem, Nicole (2011a). The life and times of WR Brown Part 1 (Online video). Plymouth, NH: Plymouth State College: Center for Rural Partnerships.
• Uphem-Bornstein, Linda; DeGrandprem, Nicole (2011b). The life and times of WR Brown Part 2 (Online video). Plymouth, NH: Plymouth State College: Center for Rural Partnerships.
• Report of Forestry Commission. New Hampshire Forestry Commission. 1918. pp. 27–31.
• Wentworth, Judith Anne Dorothea Blunt-Lytton (1979). The Authentic Arabian Horse (3 ed.). George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• "William R. Brown, 80, fire tower pioneer, Williams man, dies" (PDF). The North Adams, Massachusetts, Transcript. The Adams, Massachusetts. Friday afternoon, August 5, 1955. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |people= (help)