Captain James Brown, Pioneer, soldier and one of the founders of Ogden, Utah He enlisted in the Mormon Battalion of the U. S. Army in the Mexican War, July 16, 1846, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and was made Captain of Company C. At Santa Fe, Captain Brown was placed in charge of the sick detachment and ordered to Pueblo where they spent the winter of 1846-47 with a group of converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints enroute from Mississippi to the Salt Lake Valley.
In the spring he marched his men by way of Fort Laramie and the South Pass, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley July 29, 1847, closely following Brigham Young’s vanguard company. Early in August Brown went to California to collect the Army pay due members of the Battalion. Returning late in 1847, he stopped at the Fort of Miles Goodyear, a trapper, located near the junction of the Ogden and Weber Rivers. From Goodyear he purchased for $3,000 all of the land now comprising Weber County, together with some livestock and the Fort. This entire area being at that time a part of Mexico, the land was conveyed to Captain Brown in a Mexican land grant. In January, 1848, he settled here with his family and began the colonization of Brownsville, later named Ogden. He was born September 30, 1801 and died September 30, 1863.
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