HENRY BROWN,
who took portraits and homesteading scenes of people living in Whatcom County and Montana.

Henry William Brown was born on July 17, 1851 in Canada. His parents originally came from Ireland. Brown left home in 1865, when he was fourteen years old. At the age of eighteen, Brown moved to Montana. He hit it rich in the Bonanza Claims during the Cariboo Gold Rush in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon during the 1870s. While in the Yukon, Brown met and married his wife, Anna. Brown began his photographic career in Glendale, Montana, in the early to mid-1880s. He took city, mining and portrait photographs. Brown later homesteaded near Drayton Harbor, in Blaine, Washington.

The Browns had four sons: Byron, Ferdinand, Randolph and Lincoln. The Brown family moved to Custer, Whatcom County, Washington, in 1903, where Henry continued taking photos while owning a dairy, several saw mills and logging operations. At one time, Brown would own 11 shake mills at Custer.

Henry Brown died on April 19, 1935. He is buried in Enterprise Cemetery, located outside of Ferndale, Washington.

The Henry Brown Collection consists of 863 glass plate negatives, 770 reference prints of glass plates and 194 original prints that match glass plates. Many of the negatives are in various stages of deterioration, which is evident in several of the images selected here. The collection was donated to the Whatcom Museum of History & Art in 1995 by William Pratt. Brown was Pratt's grandfather's uncle on his father's side.