Samuel Crombie Brown was born around 1845 in a British commercial colony in the Czarist Russian city of St. Petersburg, Russia; the oldest son of Thomas Brown of St Petersburg, Russia and an elder of the Presbyterian Church. When Samuel migrated from Russia, he first migrated to Scotland and from Scotland to the United States, when he was 18 years of age. About a year later Samuel accepted an enlistment bounty of $100, one-third of which was paid to him at the time of his mustering in, and enlisted as a private in the Union Army’s 61^st Massachusetts Infantry, at Franklin, Massachusetts on August 29, 1864. After being transported to Boston, Massachusetts, he was mustered into Company B of the 61^th, at the age of 19. He stated, prior to enlisting, he had been working as a clerk and Samuel had the habit of signing his name as “S. Crombie Brown”.  Eight months after his enlistment, on April 1, 1865, he was promoted to the rank of Corporal, but by his own request was reduced in rank back to that of a private.

The 61st Massachusetts was organized at Gallop's Island in Boston Harbor, from August to October in 1864, and consisted of a battalion of five companies; Companies A through E attached to Benham’s Engineer Brigade, Department of Virginia and North Carolina and the Army of the Potomac, until 1865. It then served with the Independent Brigade, 9^th Army Corps through April 1865 and then the 1^st Brigade, 2^nd Division, 5^th Army until July 1865. Brown’s unit participated in the Appomattox Campaign, the occupation of Petersburg, Virginia, pursued Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and marched to Washington D.C. for the Union’s “Grand Review”; on May 23, 1865.  Brown also saw heated action at Hatcher’s Run and Fort Mahone, before being mustered out near Alexandria, Virginia on June 17, 1865. During their period of service, Samuel’s regiment had 1 officer and 5 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded and 20 enlisted men who died from various diseases.

Samuel Brown arrived in Australia in the late 1860’s and within a few years had met his wife to be; marrying Maria Annie Dean, the 8^th daughter of Mr. W. M. Dean of Launceston, Tasmania, on Tuesday, October 10, 1871. Their marriage was performed by special licence at St John's Church, by the Venerable Archdeacon Browne; in time producing five children. Mary was born in 1874, Phillip in 1876, Bessie in 1878, Alexander in 1882 and Thomas in 1888. Samuel had an active profession, working as a journalist in Tasmania, Victoria, New Zealand and Sydney, New South Wales and covered the Boer War in South Africa as a newspaper correspondent.

Samuel Crombie Brown died on March 20, 1905 from “exhaustion and malignant larynx”, said to be related to a war injury to his jaw.  His first cousin, Elizabeth Duncan Lane, gave a deposition to that effect in support of Samuel’s bid for a military pension on June 26, 1906. Samuel Crombie Brown was buried in Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney, New South Wales in the Church of England Section; next to his cousin, Rachael Brown of Launceston, Tasmania. After Samuels’s death his wife Maria was awarded a widow’s pension of some $48 a month, which she received until her death at the age of 97, on July 29, 1950.

Jan Crombie Brown

Augustus I. C. Hare, “Bay View Magazine”, October 1904

Birth, Marriage and Death Records, New South Wales

 Central State Archive for Personnel Records, St. Petersburg, Russia

 Launceston, Tasmania Marriage Records

“Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Civil War”

 National Archives, Washington, D.C.

 Obituary transcription, newspaper, 1905

 Regimental Histories, 61^st Massachusetts Infantry

 Rookwood Cemetery Records, New South Wales

 U.S. Army Induction Records, Film number M544 roll 5

 U. S. Pension Records, Washington, D.C.