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Murray C. Morgan
George Browne becomes a useful member of the Tacoma
Community
Bill on the Boot
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982
P. 55-56
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Copyright, 1982, Murray Morgan
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George Browne
Becomes a Useful Member of the Tacoma Community
 Tacomans,
accustomed during the construction of the Northern Pacific to long
delays between the announcement of a project and its commencement,
let alone its completion watched with surprise and delight as the
new people went about their business.
The
Griggs-Hewitt party arrived on the afternoon of June 4, 1888.
Before the day was done they had filed articles of incorporation
with the Pierce County auditor for the St. Paul & Tacoma
Lumber Company, capitalized at $ 1,500,000.
They
had held an organizational meeting and elected a board of
directors. Colonel Griggs was to be president of the company;
Foster, vice-president; Hewitt, treasurer; and George Browne, in
whose office the organizational meeting was held, secretary.
George
Browne served as a link between St. Paul & Tacoma and the
Northern Pacific: he was a nephew of NP Vice-president Oakes. A
native of Boston, whose forebears had arrived in Salem from
Lancashire in 1635, Browne had been educated in New York. At
twenty he went into the Union army, was commissioned lieutenant in
the Sixth Independent Horse Battery, and served with conspicuous
gallantry.
He
was frequently cited in dispatches, the first time after action at
Kelly's Ford on the Rappahannock during the battle of
Chancellorsville.
"The guns were
served with great difficulty, owing to the way the cannoneers were
interfered with in their duties," wrote General
Pleasanton.
"Carriages,
wagons, horses without riders and panic-stricken infantry were
rushing through and through the battery, overturning guns and
limbers, smashing caissons and trampling horse-holders under them.
While Lieutenant Browne was bringing his section into position, a
caisson without drivers came tearing through, upsetting his right
piece and seriously injuring one of the horse drivers, carrying
away both detachments of his horses, and breaking the caisson so
badly as to necessitate its being left on the field."
Browne
was again mentioned after action at Cedar Run. He rode with
Sheridan on the raid to cut Lee's communications with Richmond
during the battles of Wilderness and Spotsylvania and was in
action at Yellow Tavern near Richmond when the Confederate cavalry
genius, Jeb Stuart, was fatally wounded. For all his gallantry, he
was only a senior lieutenant when mustered out.
After
his war experiences, the young Yankee saw little risk in Wall
Street. A big man with bold, open features, a cascading mustache,
and wide cultural horizons, he accumulated friends and market tips
with equal ease. In his midforties he decided he had made enough
money and took his family to France for an extended stay.
On
returning to New York in the spring of 1887 at the age of
forty-eight, Browne was invited by his uncle Thomas Fletcher
Oakes, to cross the country to Tacoma to attend a Fourth of July
celebration that would mark the completion of the temporary
switchback railroad over Stampede Pass.
The
party reached Tacoma a day early, and Randolph Radebaugh of the
Ledger, invited Oakes for a drive in the country. Radabaugh, a
long-nosed man with a trim vandyke, had more in mind than fresh
air and a look at the Mountain. He hoped to interest the NP
vice-president in local real estate. They drove south past Wapato
lakes where Radabaugh had a homestead. He yarned about the time he
sat on his porch and watched a bear kill a calf that had become
bogged in the mud between the lakes and went as far as the
pleasant rise known as Fern Hill.
When
Oakes admired the terrain, Radebaugh revealed that he had an
option to buy at $75 to $100 an acre some two hundred acres from
homesteads owned by two Civil War veterans. Would Oakes care to
join him in a development.
Oakes
agreed on condition he could bring in his nephew, George Browne,
who came with him from the east and had a room at the Tacoma Hotel
and plenty of ready money.
"I
have the highest esteem for him and want him to locate in Tacoma
because I have great faith in the town." That evening, back
at the hotel, Browne accepted the proposition without even looking
at the land, and Tacoma acquired a highly useful citizen.
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