George H. Brown

George Hubbard Brown Jr. (May 3, 1850 – March 16, 1926) was a justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1905 to 1920. In 1927, Judge Robert Watson Winston said, "Justice Brown must be called our Dissenting Judge—he was unwilling to bend the law to meet difficult situations or to win popular favor." Early life Brown was born in 1850 in Washington, North Carolina. His parents were Elizabeth Bonner and Sylvester T. Brown, a farmer. He was sometimes referred to as George Hubbard Brown Jr. because he shared the name with the uncle, a merchant and founder and president of the Bank of Washington. His maternal grandfather was Richard Bonner, a Washington merchant and the wealthiest man in Beaufort County when he died. He was also a descendant of James Bonner, the founder of Washington. His paternal ancestors included General Thomas Holliday and Captain George Hubbard, both Revolutionary War patriots. He also had four sisters. Both of his parents died when he was a young man. When he was sixteen years old, Brown enrolled in Horner's School in Oxford, North Carolina, attending from 1866 to 1868. There, he studied the first book of Livy, three books of Julius Caesar, and some Virgil. Lacking money after his education, Brown became a telegraph operator at the main office in New York City in 1868, working at the desk next to Thomas Edison. His plans to enroll in the sophomore class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were foiled when the university closed in 1870 during reconstruction. Instead, he moved to Wilson and lived with his parents. In 1871, he moved back to Washington with his parents. There, he studied law with James E. Shepherd, who later became his brother-in-law and chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.