Frances (Cleveland) Browne
(1837 - 1893)
Page 1423, # 5074
Hartford Times, Dec. 26, 1893. — The death of Mrs. Frances Cleveland Browne, wife of President John D. Browne of the Connecticut Fire Insurance Company, occurred Christmas afternoon at the family residence. No. 570 Farmington Avenue, being caused by fever, which succeeded an attack of pneumonia.
The first years of the married life of President and Mrs. Browne were spent in Minneapolis. During the past twenty-two years they had resided in Hartford, and the deceased occupied a high position in social and religious circles. Mrs. Browne was a member of the Center church, and was a woman of superior Christian attainments. Her loss will be regarded with the sincerest regret in this community, of which she has been an earnest and exemplary member. The interment in Cedar Hill Cemetery The funeral services conducted by Rev. Charles H. Williams, acting pastor of the Center church.
Mr. John Dean Browne, residence, Hartford, Conn., president of the Connecticut Fire Insurance Company (1897).
Mr. Browne comes of long-lived Puritan and Revolutionary stock — the kind which broke up the rugged soil, built the public highways and the schoolhouses and churches, and fought the battles for liberty and independence. The old homestead first occupied by his great-great-grandfather is still in the family, and now occupied by an elder brother.
Mr. Browne’s youthful life was devoted to the farm and the district school, and at the age of nineteen he taught one of the schools of his native town. But the duties of a school-teacher were not congenial as a life-work ; and having, in 1855, made a visit to the then far-off territory of Minnesota, he made a second journey thither in the spring of 1857, and located in Minne-apolis. He was for two years connected with the Minneapolis Mill Company, and aided in the development and improvement of the magnificent water power at that point. Afterwards he went to Little Falls, then a small hamlet located about a hundred and twenty-five miles north of St. Paul, where he spent a year as secretary and agent of the Little Falls Manufacturing Company, engaged in developing the water power there by the construction of a dam across the Mississippi.
While in Minnesota, Mr. Browne was actively prominent in local and state politics, aided ‘in organizing the Republican party in Minnesota, and held intimate relations with the dominant party at the national capital throughout the administration of President Lincoln, for whose election he had been an enthusiastic and effective worker. He was often a delegate to county and state conventions, and was elected an alternate delegate to the national convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln. His Republicanism was known to be of the most pronounced type, and his political activity and enthusiasm constituted him an important factor in the councils of his party throughout the greater portion of the period of eight years over which his residence in Minnesota extended.
At the close of the Presidential campaign, in the autumn of 1860, he was elected messenger to take the first electoral vote of Minnesota to Washington, in which city he remained during the succeeding winter, haying been appointed to a desk, embracing suspended land titles, in the Interior Department at the Capitol under Jo. Wilson, then commissioner of the General Land Office. He returned to Minnesota in the spring of 1861 and for four years, during President Abraham Lincoln’s administration, was chief clerk in the office of the surveyor-general of public lands at St. Paul, to which city the office had been recently removed from Detroit.
In 1865 Mr. Browne returned East, and soon afterward entered upon insurance work, in 1867 becoming permanently connected with the Hartford Fire Insurance Compaq* – as its general manager and adjuster. In 1870 he was elected secretary of that company, in the duties of which office he was engaged for ten years, until called to the presidency of the Connecticut Fire Insurance Company in 1880. Under his conservative administration The Connecticut has reached high rank among the solid and prosperous business and financial institutions in this, great insurance center. The premium income of The Connecticut, as shown by the annual statement Jan. 1, 1880, was $399,348, and the assets $1,483,480. The premium income for the year ending Jan. 1, 1897, was $1,724,851, and the assets $3,300,017. During this period the company never failed to pay its regular semi-annual dividend, amounting, in the aggregate, to $1,400,000. The unique home office building, standing on the corner of Prospect and Grove streets, is largely due to his efforts to secure for the company a suitable and permanent home for the transaction of its large and increasing business.
In late years, with characteristic independence of thought and action, Mr. Browne has held slack allegiance to the Republican party, earnestly advocating the election of Hon. Grover Cleveland, President, and endorsing the policy of his administration. He sustains official relations with various business and social organizations in Hartford. He is a director in the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, the National Exchange Bank of Hartford, the Hartford Board of Trade, the Board of United Charities, the Connecticut Humane Society, and a director of the Retreat for the Insane. He is also a member of the Connecticut Historical Society, and of the Sons of the American Revolution.