The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.
William Thomas Brown was the first president of the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce and according to biographer Samuel Armor “an early advocate of the most enthusiastic sort of good roads, able to boast with pride that he actively participated in giving Fullerton her fine thoroughfares, renowned as among the best in all the state.”
He was president and general manager of the Brown and Dauser Lumber Company.
He was born in Macon, Georgia in 1852 and attended private schools in Winchester, Texas.
He came to California in 1873, spending his first ten years as agent and operator for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and a year as secretary of the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company in Orange.
In 1881 he bought a 21-acre ranch between Orange and Santa Ana, where he spent a couple of years farming. He then became a partner in the Anaheim yard of the J.M. Griffith Lumber Company.
In 1899 he established the Brown and Dauser Company and bought the T. S. Grimshaw lumber yard in Fullerton, the oldest yard in town. Besides the Fullerton yard, the Brown and Dauser Company had two other lumber yards, in La Habra and Brea.
“When Fullerton began the agitation for good roads it required much effort and time to persuade many of the taxpayers that better and the best roads were the greatest of assets and after the bonds were voted Mr. Brown was appointed a member of the commission that had charge of the construction, and that finally gave Fullerton pavements such as many larger municipalities do not boast of,” Armor writes.
He was married in 1878 in Wilmington, CA, to Isabella Campbell. She passed away in 1893, leaving six children: Lottie, Catherine, Mabel, Albert, W. Grant, and Helen Brown.
Mr. Brown was married a second time in 1895 to Alice Beaizley.
By 1921, he owned three orange ranches.
He was a Mason in the Fullerton Lodge and a member of the Knights of the Maccabees in Anaheim. He was a Democrat.
Fullerton History 