John Henry Brown was born in Pike County, Missouri Territory, the son of Henry S. Brown and Margaret Jones Brown. He received little formal schooling but apprenticed as a youth in a printer’s office and various newspapers in Missouri. At age 17, Brown moved to the Republic of Texas and soon thereafter worked for a newspaper in Austin. His military career began in 1840 in skirmishes with Indians, and by 1841 he had attained the rank of first sergeant. He was involved in several battles in the succeeding two years. In April 1843 Brown returned to Missouri, where in July of that year he married Marion F. Mitchel, with whom he would eventually have five children. In 1845 the couple came to Texas to live. In 1846, Brown was given the rank of major in the militia of Texas, which had joined the union as a state in December 1845. He resumed his newspaper career the same year. In 1848, the Brown family moved to Indianola, Texas. There Brown founded a newspaper and published a number of documents on the history of Texas and the Southwest. John Henry Brown became the associate editor of a newspaper in Galveston in 1854. He was elected that year to the Texas legislature, and in 1856 he became mayor of Galveston. He returned to the state legislature in 1857, following which he moved to Belton, Texas, and continued activities in both journalism and the military.

As the Civil War approached, John Henry Brown was selected in 1861 to chair the committee that prepared Texas’s articles of secession. Beginning service in the Confederate States Army as a private, he rose to the rank of major, serving on the staff of Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch, then as assistant adjutant general on Gen. Henry E. McCulloch’s staff. Because of health issues, Brown returned to Texas in 1863 and served the remainder of the war in the Texas militia. Brown was displeased with the outcome of the war and moved with his family to Mexico in June 1865, where they remained until 1871, at which time they returned to the U.S. and settled in Dallas. In 1872 Brown returned to the Texas state legislature. He held numerous state and local appointments and offices for the remainder of his life, most notably serving as Dallas’s mayor from 1885 to 1887. From 1880 until his death in 1895 Brown wrote and edited several books on the history of the region, including The History of Dallas County, 1837-1887, The Life and Times of Henry Smith, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, and The History of Texas from 1685 to 1892. Brown died in Dallas at the age of 74.