The History of the Yakima Valley, Washington, Comprising Yakima, Kittitas and
Benton Counties, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919, Volume II, page 979 

MOSES J. BROWN.

Moses J. Brown is actively engaged in ranching near Sunnyside and the course
that he has followed has largely set a standard for progressiveness in his
district. He has a place equipped with every modern improvement and he employs
the most scientific methods in the cultivation of his land and the care of his
crops. His success is indeed well deserved.

Mr. Brown is a native of Merrimack county, New Hampshire, born September 22,
1860, a son of James B. and Mary S. (Newell) Brown, who were likewise natives of
the old Granite state. The paternal grandfather, Moses Brown, was born in New
York and was a representative of one of the old colonial families. James B,
Brown devoted his life to the occupation of farming, but both he and his wife
have now passed away.

Moses J. Brown acquired a public school education in the east and afterward
engaged in clerking, being thus employed for several years. Subsequently he
began general merchandising on his own account at Henniker, New Hampshire, and
was thus busily occupied from 1895 until about 1904, when he sold his store. In
1905 he took up his abode at Spokane. This was not his first visit, however, to
Washington, for he had come to the state in 1891, settling at Wickersham, where
he entered the shingle mill business and was engaged in shingle manufacturing
until 1897, when he returned to New Hampshire and there devoted his attention to
merchandising and to farming until, again attracted by the irresistible lure of
the west, he came to Spokane. While in that city he was with the Chant Music
Company. In 1909 he purchased two hundred and thirty acres of land two miles
north of Sunnyside, the entire tract at that time being covered with sagebrush.
The following year he began the development of the ranch and in the spring of
1912 took up his abode thereon. He has seventy-eight acres planted to apples,
with pear fillers on forty acres of the tract. This is the largest orchard in
the southern part of Yakima county. He has sold considerable of his land,
retaining possession of one hundred and fifty acres, constituting one of the
valuable ranch properties of his section of the valley. He has erected a fine
home and other substantial and modern buildings upon the place. His orchard is
in fine bearing condition and he had ten car loads of fruit in 1917 from just
one-half of the orchard. His ranch is all flumed and piped for irrigation and it
has fine air drainage and is practically free from frost. Mr. Brown at first put
in an electric pumping plant with a capacity of two hundred gallons per minute
to irrigate his seventy-eight acre orchard, but in 1916 the ditch was built and
he was then able to discard the electric pumping plant. The house is lighted by
electricity and supplied with hot and cold water, both the house and barns
having water under pressure. He has a splendid hot water heating plant and his
is one of the finest developments in the valley viewed from every standpoint.

On the 6th of July, 1893, Mr. Brown was united in marriage to Miss Imogene
Swift, who was born in Clarkson, New York, a daughter of George W. and Mary J.
(Cheeseman) Swift, both of whom were farming people of the Empire state but have
now passed away.

In his political views Mr. Brown is a stalwart republican, giving earnest
support to the party. He attends the Methodist church. His wife is a member of
the Woman's Club of Sunnyside, in which she takes a very active interest. They
occupy a prominent social position and enjoy the high regard of all with whom
they have come in contact, while Mr. Brown's reputation in business circles is a
most enviable one. Actuated by a most progressive spirit and at all times
achieving his purposes, his labors have exemplified the most advanced ideas in
modern ranching and have constituted an example that many others have followed.

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Submitted to the Washington Bios Project in January 2008 by Jeffrey L. Elmer.
Submitter has no additional information about the subject of this article.