Lew Buford Brown

Early life

Lew was born in Madison, Arkansas in the midst of the Civil War. His mother was Amelia L. Brown and his father was George L. Brown, who served in the Confederate Army at the time of Lew’s birth and was promoted to Captain by the end of the war. He was captured by the Union but later released as part of a prisoner trade deal. Lew had two younger sisters, Cora and Hattie. Cora was only about two years younger than Lew, while Hattie was about five years younger than him. At 6, Lew decided to be home schooled by his father. He would never receive a full public education despite his desire for one.

His family constantly moved around the South under Reconstruction, from Madison to St. Louis, then to Helena and eventually back to Madison. When the county seat moved to Forest City, so did the Browns. It was in Forest City where Lew witnessed a murder of a white man at the hands of a black man.

The First Print

A year after moving to Forest City, the Brown family moved to Ozark. George had bought the city newspaper, the Ozark Banner, to publish himself. At 10, Lew gave up his school work again to help his father in the print shop after his father’s health took a violent turn for the worse. At thirteen, Lew and his sisters began printing their own Saturday paper, the Monthly Visitor, with great success. Lew’s father died in April 1876, finally succumbing to an illness he’d contracted in the war prison.

His mother married the Banner’s new foreman, Joseph William Cummings, a few months later. The family later sold the Banner and moved from Russelville, Arkansas to Cloverport, Kentucky to Louisville, Kentucky. In Louisville, Lew forfeited his chance for a high school diploma in order to feed his family. He eventually joined the Courier-Journal as a journeyman printer and later became the foreman, journalist and poet for both it and the Louisville Times.

Mrs. Brown

On February 11, 1885, Lew Brown married Emma Julia Struby and picked up a third job working as foreman for a Sunday paper called the Truth after their honeymoon. On July 11, 1886, Lew and Emma had their first child, Llewellyn Chauncey Brown, who was diagnosed with a weak heart. The combined stress of his four jobs, he was now the editor of the Labor Record, and Chauncey’s wellbeing motivated the Brown family to the farmlands. In November 1886, the Browns moved to Spencer County, Indiana to live in their new farm residence, Fairview Farm. The farming venture was a disaster by all counts. Lew spent all of the money he had earned to get the seed and capital to plant, and the rain washed away the loose topsoil and all of his work. Lew regained his job at the Courier-Journal and moved back to Louisville by spring.

On August 13, 1889, the Browns had another child, Albert Young, who in contrast to Chauncey, was very healthy. Lew suffered a heart attack a few weeks later and was warned by doctors not to push himself so hard working. Lew and his family decided to move to Peewee Valley to grow peaches. The peaches turned out underwhelming and only fit to be turned into vinegar and wine. The farming venture did not last long. A few weeks after the peaches were harvested, the Brown’s house burned to the ground. Lew bought the Spencer Courier and resumed his newspaper work. On August 26, 1890, Lew’s first daughter, Barbra, was born. Later that year, the Spencer Courier printing office burned to the ground, forcing Lew to move operations into a house had had previously constructed.

Attorney Brown

Lew was unable to reliably sustain his family due the Panic of 1892, so he decided he would hold two jobs as a newspaper man and a lawyer. Lew earned his license by the Supreme Court, which allowed him to be Police Judge, then State Attorney. Lew and his wife were baptized on August 28, 1894. Lew later become a Sunday school teacher, then the superintendent. Tragedy struck once again, Albert caught diphtheria in the woods and died on December 13, about a week later. Six days later, Julia had a heart attack and died, induced by the stress of losing their second born son.

Lew married his late wife’s sister, Mollie Amelia Struby on October 10, 1895. Lew's first daughter, Barbra died on November 17 from diphtheria, just as her brother had before. Mollie would bear his second daughter, Amelia Louise, on September 14, 1898. The following year, Lew ran for county prosecutor. He won handily due to his willingness to make a speech at bullet point. In the fall of 1902, Chauncey was admitted to Kentucky State College, at 15, thus being well on his way to earning the full education his father never was able to obtain. The next year, Lew sold his law practice and the Spencer Courier and moved on to the Harrodsburg Democrat. He only defended at one last trial, and then stopped practicing law for good. Chauncey obtained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in June 1906 with many high honors and accolades. He returned to school to obtain his masters.

In 1907, Lew was elected president of the Kentucky Press association, and he used his new position to introduce a new law, which was designed to protect consumers from false advertising. The law passed and a few other states in the region copied his idea. On December 10, 1908, Lew’s stepfather, Will, had passed, leaving his mother alone and restless. Lew decided to buy a winter home in Florida, where she lived, to keep her company.

Sunshine Gambit

Lew spent only five days in St. Petersburg but he made the decision to make it a semi-permanent residence by buying the Evening Independent, named for its print time of 4:00 pm. His wife had helped him double the paper’s subscriptions and joined the Woman’s Town Improvement Association and Les Treize.

Lew’s immersion in the town’s growth began in 1909, where he joined the Charter committee and set up a new charter, which was ratified in March. He also advocated for a hospital to be built to prevent the ill from simply collapsing due to inadequate healthcare. On September 1, 1910, Lew Brown took his most radical step for promoting St. Petersburg, by way of “The Sunshine Offer.” He proclaimed that every day the sun does not shine, he would give his paper away for free. Within six weeks, he had to give away two free papers, due to a hurricane. Fortunately, Lew’s gambit only averaged four free papers every year the Independent was published. By the end of the 1910, he sold the Democrat and bought a permanent residence in St. Petersburg. In addition, his son Chauncey owned one third of the Independent and chose to live in St. Petersburg as well.

Lew used his political clout to advocate for the separation of the Pinellas Peninsula from the rest of Hillsborough County. The measure succeeded in November, 1911, and the new county was named Pinellas. When Pinellas became its own county, Lew, as the President of the Board of Trade, commissioned a road through Pinellas County. During construction, it came to his attention the contractors had used inferior bricks and pocketed the difference in cash. Lew put an end to the graft, but he had managed to create a few enemies along the way, due to the public nature of the affair. One commissioner had written an editorial in the St. Petersburg Times that defamed both him and Chauncey. When Lew saw Chauncey’s good name being slandered, he threatened to shoot the commissioner dead. The commissioner called the police, and Lew went to trial for threatening to kill. He was acquitted and an apology appeared in the Times the next day, along with the Independent’s front page coverage of the trial.

Major Brown

In December 1913, Lew invested in an airline to get people across Tampa Bay. On September 16, 1915, Chauncey married former dance teacher Marion Edwina Ames. On July 23, 1916, Lew Brown, William, Straub and George Gandy revived the Yacht Club. Lew met his first grandchild in January 1917, born from Chauncey and Edwina. When World War I began, Lew was appointed by Governor Catts to be Captain of the Home Guard for Pinellas County. Lew initially called for 100 men to enlist for one company, but he soon had four and the four elected him to be the commissioner. Catts promoted Lew to the position of major shortly after.

On October 25, 1921, St. Petersburg is hammered by a hurricane, which took out the recreational pier. Lew launched a campaign to have the pier rebuilt, raising $300,000 to do so. It was rebuilt by January of the following year at a final cost of almost $1,000,000.

End of Brown's Life

On August 14, 1923, a new charter was ratified by the commission, which Lew Brown chartered while he was the president of the commission. It reduced the power of the mayor and allowed commission members to be elected by popular vote. On August 21, Lew Brown immersed himself in a political fight over the Nolan Plan for too much control over city development. Unlike most political fights he participated in, he lost his bid to remove the Nolan Plan. On December 19, Lew’s youngest daughter, Louise, married Orville Ray in the Soreno Hotel.

On December 16, 1927, the city of St. Petersburg celebrated one year of sunshine, in which time no free papers were given. Earlier that year, Lew had ceded the positions for Editor and president over to Chauncey. On July 18, 1929, Lew’s mother, Amelia Levisa Young Brown Cummings, finally passed on.

In January 1941, Mollie died, twelve days after Lew’s first great grandchild Alan Zaiser was born. On August 16, 1944, Lew B. Brown died at 85 years old.

Publications

Lew was a known poet and had many of his works published in newspapers. Eventually they were compiled into a book called A Bit of Lace and Other Poems, which was reprinted with the additional poem “Woman,” called Woman and Other Poems.

Controversy

The nature of the time period and location did yield Lew to have racist tendencies, of an odd patriarchal sort, which is to say he regarded the African-Americans as children who could not govern themselves. He supported the White Primaries that were common occurrences in the South and wrote they were necessary “in order to maintain control of city affairs in the hands of the white people.” While he did not write of any explicit hatred or ill will to “negroes,” he did carry an air of superiority above them.

The tragic lynching of John Evans and Lew’s commentary on the situation illuminates his odd bipolarity. After the event he wrote, “It should be remembered that John Evans was not a St. Petersburg Negro; he came here only a few weeks ago from Dunnellon. It is usually the Negroes that stray here and stay only a short while who commit crimes. The bulk of St. Petersburg negroes are honest, principled people who are industrious and well behaved.”

Lew also wrote a poem about Mulatto people, titled “To a Mulatto,” where he calls the child an abomination and the black in their blood was somehow inferior to the white blood but still implicates that the whites have an obligation to not produce such children. It is this unsavory attitude to a fellow human that caused a stir in August 2000, when a statue of Lew Brown was to be placed in the Pier he had helped maintain. The statue was abandoned in favor of a nondescript child selling the Evening Independent. A compromise was met where the statue would be nondescript, but Lew would be mentioned on the “Sunshine Offer” Plaque.