Representative Benjamin Brown

Benjamin Brown (politician) (September 23, 1756 – September 17, 1831) was an American physician and politician who served as a member of the Fourteenth United States Congress. He was born in Swansea, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, where he spent his early years in the waning decades of the colonial period. Coming of age during the American Revolution, he pursued medical studies and established himself as a physician, a profession that positioned him as a figure of local importance and public trust in his community.

Brown’s education followed the pattern of many learned men of his generation, combining formal schooling with apprenticeship-style training in medicine. After qualifying to practice, he relocated to the District of Maine, then still a part of Massachusetts, where he built a medical practice and became involved in local affairs. His work as a physician during a period of frontier expansion and limited medical infrastructure gave him a prominent role in the daily lives of his neighbors and helped lay the groundwork for his later political career.

Brown entered public life as a Federalist at a time when the young republic was defining its political institutions and regional interests. He was elected as a Federalist to the Fourteenth Congress and served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1815, to March 3, 1817, representing a district in the District of Maine. His term coincided with the immediate aftermath of the War of 1812, a period marked by debates over national defense, commerce, and the economic recovery of New England. Although not among the most nationally prominent legislators of his era, his service placed him within the broader Federalist effort to articulate the concerns of maritime and northeastern constituencies in the postwar settlement.

After completing his single term in Congress, Brown returned to his medical practice and local civic responsibilities in Maine. He continued to be regarded as a respected community leader, balancing his professional work with ongoing engagement in public affairs at the local level. Brown lived to see Maine’s separation from Massachusetts and its admission to the Union as a state in 1820, a major regional development that reshaped the political landscape in which he had served.

Benjamin Brown died on September 17, 1831, in North Yarmouth, Maine. He was interred locally, and his life is remembered as representative of the generation of New England professionals who bridged the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods, contributing to both the civic and political development of the communities they served.