BROWN, Charles Oliver

BROWN, Charles Oliver. (Battle Creek, MI, July 22, 1848-- ). When he was four years of age, Brown and his parents moved to Toledo, Ohio where his father had a blacksmith shop. At the age of 11, he drove a team on the canal from Toledo to Cincinnati (Miami and Erie Canal). He attended the Toledo Grammar School.

After the outbreak of the CIVIL WAR in 1861, Brown's father, Major Oliver M. Brown, organized Company C of the 3rd Ohio Cavalry. Charles Oliver Brown went off to war with his father as a bugler at the age of thirteen and saw action in twenty-five battles. He was wounded in action and earned the nickname, "The Boy Bugler" of Sherman's Army. At age sixteen, he was made chief of the regiment's 26 buglers, the youngest chief bugler in the Union forces at that time.

Brown enrolled in Oberlin College in 1871. In his junior year, he was listed as an instructor in penmanship and bookkeeping. In 1875-76, he was listed as an instructor in Greek and teacher of penmanship and bookkeeping. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June 1875. He married into a family which had close ties to Charles Grandison Finney, the "Father of Modern Revivalism," and Brown later admitting receiving hours of counsel from him.

The Rev. Mr. Charles O. Brown accepted the call made by the church and began his ministry on September 3, 1876 at a salary of $900.00 per year and house rent. From 1880 - 1885 he served at the Congregational Church of Galesburg, Michigan, taught at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and served as pastor of the First Congregational Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Brown began his work in Dubuque at the First Congregational Church on the first Sunday of January, 1886. Brown practiced "Finneyite revivalism." According to this belief, each individual was a "monarch of one's own destiny." The preacher was to present a straightforward argument for conversion, inform the sinner that it was in his/her power to choose, and then appeal to him/her to do so. Brown added to this a strong call for military preparedness, a fear of Roman Catholic pressure on the public schools, a critical view of inherited wealth, a belief that real labor grievances only occurred in "the old world," and total abstinence from alcohol.

In the spring of 1886, Brown presented "Talks of the Labor Troubles" in six separate evening talks. His solution to labor unrest called for hard work and equality of opportunity. In 1890 he gave a series of talks entitled "The Public Schools and Their Foes." In them, Brown suggested the Roman Catholic effort to establish separate schools was a danger similar to slavery. To those who suggested that public schools encouraged immorality, Brown suggested a visit to DUBUQUE HIGH SCHOOL where they would see:

              the air of gentle courtesy and refinement which prevails
              there could never arise from years of immoral teaching.