Elizabeth Anderson (b: 17??)

Thomas Brown Sr (b: 18??)

Thomas Brown Jr (b:18??)

Francis Brown (b: 1862)

John Brown (b: 1804)

John Brown was born in 1804 to parents Andrew Brown and Isabella Moodie in Marykirk, Kincardineshire, Scotland. He was baptised at Marykirk on the 4th of March, 1805. Little is know of about his parents or his schooling except he was friends with Thomas Napier, born in Marykirk, on the 11th July 1802, fifth son of James Napier, a weaver in the same village. Both boys may have attended school together and this is where their friendship may have began which was to continue for the rest of their lives. Some time after their schooling John Brown appears to have entered the building trade, maybe as an apprentice and Thomas Napier was apprentinced in 1816, aged 14, to his uncle's timber business at Blackfriars Bridge, London as a clerk. He remained there until he was 20 and during the same time he studied painting for two years at the British Museum. Napier returns to Marykirk, Scotland in 1822 to work as a carpenter, both on his own and in partnership with John Brown. On the 12th June, 1832, Helen Anderson (b: 1802) gives birth to John Brown first child, Elizabeth Strathan Brown. Helen Anderson appears to have been a girl from the same village who's parents were John Anderson & Elizabeth Strachan. Soon after the birth of John Browns first child, Napier & Brown leave Scotland for Van Diemen's Land aboard the ship Lavinia. They arrived at Hobart Town on the 5th November 1832, where they built several houses, including one for Surveyor-General George Frankland to Frankland's design. On Napier & Browns arrival in Hobart, Tasmania they witnessed the surviving aborginal members of the Big River tribe being brought to Hobart by George Augustus Robinson on route to Flinders Island. Napier obtained permission to paint their portraits, his oil painting of Woureddy and Trukanini seated and clad in wallaby skins, a larger oil Alphonse, the Tasmanian and a portrait of Manalargenna date from this time.

Sometime in 1834, Helen Anderson (b: 1802) arrives in Hobart, Tasmania with her child Elizabeth. It is knot know if Helen Anderson (b:1802) took this voyage herself or was sent for by John Brown but on the 10th June, 1805 the couple was married in Hobart, Tasmania and on the 8th March, 1835 their second daughter Helen Brown was born, followed by John Brown born 22nd September, 1836 and Isabella Brown born 15th May, 1838 all in Hobart, Tasmania.

In March 1837 Napier chartered the coastal clipper ship, Gem, and took a cargo of timber to the new settlement at Port Phillip, Melbourne, Victoria. He decided to settle there and at the first land sale in June 1838 purchased a block of land in Collins Street West for himself and one for his friend John Brown on the corner of Elizabeth St and little Flinders Street. Napier erected his own wattle and daub cottage on his block and sent for his wife Jessie Paterson, orginaly from Dundee, Scotland, whom he had married in Hobart, Tasmania on the 3rd August, 1836. It is possible that the John & Helen Brown and Mrs Napier crossed the Tasman to Melbourne on the same ship in 1838.

After their arrival in Melbourne, Victoria the following children where born to John & Helen Brown, Mary Anne Brown born 25th December, 1839, Robert Brown born 31 October, 1842, Susan Brown born April, 1844 and James Brown born 31st October, 1845.

Napier and Brown continued in the building trade for a further two years. A house they erected on the corner of Bourke and Queen streets became one of several claimants to the title of the first brick house in Melbourne. In the 1840's John Brown entered into a partnership with James Stewart and set up a Wine & Spirits Merchants in Lonsdale St, Melbourne.

In October, 1852 John Brown purchased Como House, Toorak where the family would reside until 1863.