author
James S. (James Stephens) Brown
1828–1902
A Mormon Battalion veteran, California gold discoverer, and frontier missionary, this nineteenth-century memoirist lived a life full of movement, hardship, and unlikely turns. His writing offers a firsthand view of westward migration and early Latter-day Saint history.
1 Audiobook
Life of a Pioneer: Being the Autobiography of James S. Brown
by James S. (James Stephens) Brown
About the author
Born in Davidson County, North Carolina, on July 4, 1828, James Stephens Brown grew up during the era of America's westward expansion. He became an early member of the Latter-day Saint movement and joined the westward exodus of the Saints in the 1840s.
Brown is especially remembered for his service in the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican-American War and for being present in California at the time of the gold discovery at Sutter's Mill in 1848. He later served as a missionary in the Society Islands and became known as a speaker and writer whose recollections preserved vivid details of pioneer life.
He died in Salt Lake City on March 25, 1902. Today he is best known as the author of Life of a Pioneer, an autobiography valued for its firsthand account of migration, frontier survival, and early Latter-day Saint experience.