JACOB B. BROWN. 5 1 



the rank of major, resignino^ some years later to take up engi- 

 neering in civil life. 



His son, Jacob, the subject of this sketch, entered Columbia 

 College, New York, and was in the second year of his course 

 when his father, who had been for some years chief engineer of 

 the Erie Railroad, was selected by the Russian government to 

 fill the same position on the St. Petersburg and Moscow R. R. 

 At the age of i8 Jacob Brown accompanied his parents to 

 Russia, where for eight years the family lived in St. Petersburg. 



Jacob Brown spent a portion of this time in Moscow, pur- 

 sued a special course at the University of Berlin, and made 

 one visit to England. Subsequently, his father's health fail- 

 ing, the family removed to Italy, where Mr. Thompson 

 Brown died at Naples. 



For some ten years the family made Florence their home, 

 Mr. Brown conducting during a portion of the time, in com- 

 pany with an English friend, a school for English-speaking 

 boys and young men at Nice, France, and devoting a portion 

 to the care of his mother in Florence. During this period he 

 became thoroughly familiar with the language, literature and 

 history of that part of Italy, a region which among the many 

 places visited in his wide travels was always endeared to him 

 by its associations of home and family ties. 



A younger sister had married in St. Petersburg, and on 

 his (journeys between Italy and that city he had the opportun- 

 ity of seeing much of the life of various cities, on one occa- 

 sion making a driving tour through a part of Finland. 



About 1S70 Mr. Brown returned on family business to the 

 United States, which he had not visited ( except for a very 

 short time in 1859) since his days at Columbia College, and 

 in his reminiscences one can readily see how greatly he was 

 impressed by the gigantic changes through which our countiy 

 had passed in the intervening years — a period which had 

 witnessed the Civil War, the acquisition of our Pacific coast, 

 and an enormous development of New York and San Fran- 

 cisco. He crossed the continent in some eiarht or nine davs and 



