John Thomas Browne was born on March 23, 1845 in Ballylanders, County Limerick, Ireland and died on August 19, 1941 in Houston Texas, at the age of 96.

He was the son of Michael and Winifred (Winnie) Hennessy Browne, and in 1852, when the third consecutive potato crop failed, they sold all their belongings and bought passage to New Orleans with their six children. The baby of the family, Michael Jr., died on the ship and was buried at sea. John was six years old when they came to America.

They intended to then go to Winifred’s uncle’s house (Dr. Patrick Hayes – a herbal medicine doctor and farmer in Madison County, Texas), but Michael (Winifred’s husband), had fallen ill on board the ship and died after a few weeks in New Orleans. Winnie had no choice but to put her children in an orphanage and look for work.

Soon, though, her uncle arrived and took the family on a boat to Galveston and then up the Trinity River to Cairo. The children were continually sick with a recurring fever and Winifred worried they were far from a Catholic church, and that they were in danger of losing their Catholic faith, so when her brother came to visit, they loaded up in his wagon and moved to Houston.

Young John Thomas earned his first money as a bearer in a brickyard at $4 a month. He brought all his wages to his mother, and then soon got a regular job as a driver of a baggage wagon, which led to a job as messenger with the Houston and Texas Central Railroad.

At the age of sixteen, he enlisted in the Confederate Army (Company B, 2nd Texas Infantry), and because of his youth was assigned to work as a locomotive fireman on the railroad going to San Antonio.

On September 10, 1871, he and Mary Jane Bergin (Mollie) were married in the Annunciation Church in Houston – the first couple to be married there. In the Houston Chronicle (3/17/1940) he was described as “sharp-witted, honest and industrious” and found work in the grocery business as a bookkeeper and clerk , and then went into partnership with Charles Bollfrass to open a wholesale and retail grocery store on the corner of Milam and Preston in Houston. They started with $500 in capital in 1872, and by the early 1890’s were earning $340,000 annually.

John Thomas Browne

He and Mary Jane had twelve children, one of them being Thomas J. Browne, a city assessor and tax collector who the newspaper described as one of the best-loved figures in Houston history.

John served as an alderman in Houston for two terms, then became mayor in 1892. He served two terms as mayor and was known as “Honest John Browne” and also as the “Fighting Irishman”. According to Wikipedia, he was instrumental in forming the Houston Fire Department as a paid force. He later served two terms in the Texas legislature.

The Houston Chronicle interviewed him the year before he died, and mentions the “merry twinkling of his eyes and the laugh creases about his lips as he talks about old Houston. He wears the short, neatly clipped beard and moustache, both brown but lightly touched with white, like his hair which shows but few signs of thinning. If you weren’t told you would hardly believe his age could be more than 72 … his hearing is not as good as it used to be and he likes to hear every word you say, especially if you’re talking about Old Houston, his Houston.”

John Thomas Browne and Mary Jane Bergin Browne

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