BLACK SEAMAN - Pre war of 1812

Document certifying "That Noah Brown, an American Seaman, aged Twenty Four Years, or thereabouts, of the Height of Five Feet, Four & half Inches, Black Complexion, has a scar on his right leg, and one on his left arm, and marks of the small pox in his face".

William J. Brown was born in 1814 into a free African American family in Providence, Rhode Island. His father's parents had been slaves owned by Rhode Island's greatest mercantile family, the Browns; his mother was the daughter of an African-American slave and a Narragansett Indian woman. Brown's father had been a sailor and laborer; William worked at these occupations as well, but became a shoemaker and a prominent member of the African-American community in Providence. His autobiography, published in 1883, is one of the fullest records of black life in New England in the years before the Civil War.

Seaman Noah Brown