Son of James Brown & Martha Stephens

Married Amanda McMurtry, 31 May 1850, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California

Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia
Volume 3

Brown, Alexander, a member of the Mormon Battalion, was born March 3, 1826, near Lexington, North Carolina, the son of Captain James Brown and Martha Stephens. Becoming a convert to "Mormonism," together with his father's family, he was baptized by Jacob Foutz in Adams county, Illinois, in 1840. He was with the Saints in their persecutions in Illinois and came west in the exodus of 1846. Having arrived on the Missouri river in July of that year, he enlisted, together with his father and younger brother (Jesse), in the Mormon Battalion, and marched with that body to Sante Fe, whence he was assigned to the sick detachment under his father, Capt. James Brown, which spent the winter of 1846-1847 on the Arkansas river. The following spring the journey to Salt Lake Valley was continued and that place reached July 29, 1847. Alexander assisted in building the old fort in Salt Lake City. In the spring of 1848, after his father had purchased the Goodyear claim on the Weber river, Alexander went to that locality with his father and plowed the first land in Weber county. The place where this first plowing was done was on a piece of ground lying between 28th and 29th streets of the present Ogden City survey, the land now being owned by James M. Brown on Washington avenue. The first furrow plowed ran east and west about fifty rods in length. During the gold excitement in 1849 Bro. Brown went to California, where he, on May 31, 1849, married Amanda McMurtray, in Greenwood valley, Sacramento county. She bore her husband eight children. From Greenwood valley Bro. Brown moved to San Bernardino, and returned to Utah about 1854. In 1856 he was ordained a High Priest and set apart to act as a second counselor to Bishop Chauncey W. West of the Ogden Third Ward. Alexander Brown continued a resident of Weber county the remainder of his life; he died in Ogden April 21, 1910, survived by his wife, six children, 27 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren.

* Mormon Battalion members