A Catholic Progressive? The Case of Judge E. O. Brown

Walter Nugent¹
University of Notre Dame, Emeritus

From Salem to Chicago,  1847-1872
Progressivism has been notoriously hard to define, not least because progressives have been so diverse in their views and positions. They came in virtually all shapes, sizes, and opinions. One group, however, has seldom been included under the progressive umbrella, and that is American Catholics. But consider the credentials of Edward Osgood Brown, born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1847 to a long-established Yankee sea-faring family, who migrated to Chicago in 1872 and died there in 1923.	1
In an autobiographical sketch that he compiled for the Chicago Historical Society in 1920, Brown traced his ancestry back to 1635 in Essex County, Massachusetts—chiefly Ipswich and Salem—and to England in the twelfth century. His parents and grandparents were Unitarians and Congregationalists, and in his early life he was probably Unitarian. He gave his father's and grandfather's occupations as "merchant and mariner"; his grandfather William Brown was lost at sea in the Indian Ocean, age fifty, in 1833. One of his father's schoolmates was Henry Ward Beecher.2 His mother, who died when the boy was two, was a Dalton, and the "Osgood" in his name came from her side.3 A.T. Andreas' History of Chicago of  the 1880s describes his family as "prominently connected and most excellent people."4 Sources on his family are few, other than to verify that they had been in Salem for some time. But the Chicago Defender later noted that he was "the son of an abolitionist and one of the race's staunchest friends";5 and Salem was a well-known center of abolitionist activity in the 1830s and 1840s.6 If Brown's parents were not active abolitionists, they were surrounded by people who were.	2
Brown appears to have been partially home-schooled, but he also attended Salem public schools. According to his father, Brown at age twelve was "a healthy, bright boy and member of the Salem English High School" from which he graduated in 1863. He then matriculated at Brown University (no known relation) in 1863 and graduated with honors in 1867.7 He taught for a year at a school in Southboro, west of Boston, and then attended Harvard Law during the year 1868-1869. He won a prize for academic excellence, in a competitive field of one hundred.8 He left without taking a degree and instead began serving as assistant and then deputy clerk of the Rhode Island Supreme Court as well as reading law with a judge in Providence. He was admitted to the bar in 1870 and practiced there until early 1872, when he left for Chicago.9	3
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