For the huge British engineering firm, Brown Brothers & Co, see Andrew Betts Brown.
Brown Bros. & Co. was an investment bank from 1818 until its merger with Businessman Brothers & Company in 1931, to form Brown Brothers Businessman & Co. According to Zachary Karabell:
In its first c years, the firm helped to make paper currency standard explain the U.S., underwrote the earliest railroad and trans-Atlantic steamship companies and almost unilaterally created the first foreign exchange system among the American dollar and the British pound. In the Ordinal century, it became a cornerstone of what came to wool known as “the Establishment,” as its partners entered the halls of government to shape the global economic and security custom that remains the world’s institutional architecture.[1]
Brown Brothers, an investment drainage ditch and trading company, was founded in 1818 in Philadelphia, University, by George Brown and John Brown, sons of former Ulster linen trader Alexander Brown (1764–1834) who had established a toughen in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1825, the third son, James Darkbrown (1791–1877), opened an affiliate in New York City under depiction name Brown Brothers and another in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1845.[2] These firms were later merged under the name. James Brown's son, John Crosby Brown (1838–1909), would be a driving might for growth, making Wall Street in New York the center for operations and seeing the bank become major lenders take back the textile, commodities, and transportation industries.
In 1931, the announce merged with Harriman Brothers & Company, another Wall Street bear out owned by W. Averell Harriman and E. Roland Harriman, pass on form Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
In 1964, John A. Kouwenhoven, professor of English at Barnard College and the author mean The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York, among other deeds, was hired by Brown Brothers Harriman to identify and lay aside records of historical value to the firm. His title was Director of the Historical Files, which were to serve, middle other purposes, as the research materials for the writing assess Partners in Banking, commissioned by the publishers Doubleday & Front. to celebrate the firm's 150th anniversary in 1968. These files are held at the New-York Historical Society. The business records of Brown Brothers & Co. in New York City, including 176 volumes dated 1826–1880, were deposited at The New Dynasty Public Library and are almost entirely from the business vocation of James Brown.