Alexander Brown (17 November 1764 – 4 April 1834), was an Irish merchant and banker. Beginning as a merchant trader, first of linen in Belfast, then of cotton and tobacco after migrating to Baltimore, Maryland, he later shifted his focus to financial services. He founded Alex. Brown & Sons, the oldest investment banking firm in the US, in 1800, and with his sons operated a network of banks in the US and England. He made his fortune from the transatlantic cotton trade, and was one of the first millionaires in the United States.
Early life and emigration
Alexander Brown was born 17 November 1764 in Ballymena in County Antrim (now in Northern Ireland), one of four surviving children of William Brown and Margaret Brown (née Davison). As a young man, Brown achieved some success as a linen dealer and auctioneer in Belfast. In 1783 he married Grace Davison, possibly his cousin, from Drumnasole, County Antrim, and they had four surviving children, William (b. 30 May 1784), George (b. 17 April 1787), John (b. 21 May 1788), and James (b. 4 February 1791). These boys were sent to school with the Reverend J. Bradley in Yorkshire.
While there is no evidence that Brown was involved in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, he did go into hiding in its aftermath and, perhaps as a consequence of the resulting political and economic conditions in Ireland, he emigrated to the United States. Several years earlier Brown's brother-in-law, Dr George Brown, and his younger brother, Stewart, who had sold linen goods supplied by Alexander, had emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland. Thus it was to Baltimore, a growing port town of 26,514 people on the upper Chesapeake Bay, that Brown, his wife, and son William (the younger sons still in school in Yorkshire) sailed in 1800.
By 20 December Brown had established an address and his "Irish Linen Warehouse" and was able to publish in the Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertiser that he had for sale linen goods, three dozen mahogany chairs, and four clocks. This was the beginning of a thriving business for Alexander Brown & Company, importing general merchandise and Irish linens to Baltimore, the latter supplied by his cousin William Gihon and friends in Ulster, and exporting tobacco and cotton to Liverpool from the American south. In 1803 he brought his three younger sons to Baltimore, and by 1805 took William into partnership with him as Alexander Brown & Son; five years later George was included in the partnership to form Alexander Brown & Sons, the oldest such bank in the United States, which is currently partnered with Raymond James, a wealth management firm.
Transatlantic businesses
Brown realised that Liverpool was the key to the transatlantic trade in which he was engaged, and in 1809 he sent William, who it was thought would also benefit from a less humid climate, to Liverpool to carry out shipping and merchandising arrangements for his father's interests. William founded a company in his own name in 1810, later changed to William & James Brown & Company, with his brother, and still later to Brown, Shipley & Company, with Joseph Shipley, an American who joined the firm in 1826 and who was instrumental in saving it during the Panic of 1837 by negotiating a £1,950,000 loan from the Bank of England. The Liverpool firm first functioned as an agent for Alexander Brown & Sons, purchasing linen and other goods and becoming a leading seller of cotton and tobacco.
Alexander Brown's initial business was based on trade in goods; he even acquired his own fleet of merchant ships. However, in the aftermath of the War of 1812, he realised that there was less risk and more money to be earned handling the finances of the transatlantic trade. As Brown began to provide financial services for other merchants, buying sterling bills from cotton and tobacco exporters in the American south and selling them to importers of British merchandise in Baltimore, the Liverpool operation became a vital link in the process of handling currency exchange and of providing credit for international commerce, that is, accepting (guaranteeing) bills of exchange, issuing letters of credit, and furnishing information on the financial reliability of firms engaged in the transatlantic trade. In 1863 offices were opened at Founders' Court, Lothbury, London and in 1888 the Liverpool operations were closed. Brown, Shipley continues in several British cities as part of Quintet Private Bank of Luxembourg.