Meet Joseph R. Brown

Meet Joseph R. Brown. A major public figure in early Minnesota (1820-1870). , In 1852, Joseph R. Brown founded the town of Henderson after a 32-year career as a soldier at frontier outposts, fur trader, experimental farmer, justice of the peace, speculator, lumberman, lobbyist and legislator, transportation agent and newspaper editor. The city of Browns Valley and Brown County are named for Joseph Renshaw Brown. , Joe Brown the politician, or Joe the Juggler as he was known at the legislature, also balanced many responsibilities in other parts of his life. To support a large family during the 1850s and '60s he created a diverse transportation business that moved people and supplies westward by steamboat, ox-drawn wagon and stagecoach. His innovative nature led Brown to develop a steam wagon to carry even larger amounts of goods across the prairies of Minnesota and Nebraska. , Because of Brown's part-Dakota wife, Susan, his life was intertwined with the movement of the Dakota bands out of the Minnesota River valley through treaties, the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War and its aftermath. He moved from fur trader to Indian agent to treaty negotiator to special military agent in charge of the Dakota scouts who patrolled Minnesota's western border.