Samuel Robbins Brown

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Samuel Robbins Brown (1810-80) was an American missionary to China. He was born in Connecticut, graduated at Yale in 1832, studied theology in Columbia, S. C., and taught for four years (1834-38) in the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. In 1838 he went to Canton and opened, for the Morrison Education Society, the first Protestant School in the Chinese Empire — a school in which were taught Yung Wing and other pupils who afterward came to the United States. The several annual reports on this school were published in the Chinese Repository for 1840 to 1846, to which he contributed some of his papers on Chinese subjects. After nine years' service, his wife's health failing, Dr. Brown returned to the United States and became a pastor and teacher of boys at Owasco Outlet, near Auburn (1851-59). He worked for the formation of a college for women, which was situated first in Auburn and then in Elmira, N. Y. When by the Townsend Harris treaty of 1858, Yokohama and Nagasaki in Japan were opened to trade and residence, Dr. Brown sailed for the former port and opened a school in which hundreds of young men, afterward leaders in various walks of life, were educated. He translated the New Testament, and taught and preached for 20 years. He was one of the founders of the Asiatic Society of Japan and in many ways was one of the most prominent makers of the new Japan. He is buried at Monson, Mass., his boyhood's home. He has published:

• Colloquial Japanese (1863), a grammar, phrase book, and vocabulary
• Prendergast's Mastery System Adapted to the Japanese
• translation of Arai Hakuseki's Sei Yo Ki Bun: or, Annals of the Western Ocean

[edit] Publications

• Griffis, A Maker of the New Orient (New York, 1902)

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.