Hiram Brown was born in November of 1848 in Sparta, Kent County, Michigan, the son of Pennsylvania natives Clark R. Brown (1810-1886) and Lucy Edmonds (1816-1854).
Clark and Lucy were married in 1832 and they moved to New York before 1834. Clark eventually brought his family on to Michigan between 1836 and 1838. By 1850 Hiram was living with his family on a farm in Sparta, Kent County. Lucy died February 10, 1854, and on July 10, 1854, Clark remarried to a widow by the name of Mary Friant Jenkins (her husband David had died by 1850). In 1860 Hiram was attending school with seven of his siblings, and living with his family in Sparta. (His father owned some $8000 worth of real estate.)
Hiram stood 5’10” with black eyes, brown hair and a light complexion, and was an 18-year-old farmer possibly living in Sparta, Kent County when he enlisted in Company F on January 22, 1864, at Grand Rapids for 3 years, crediting Sparta, and was mustered the same day. (He might have been related to Henry Brown who enlisted in Company F on February 5, 1864.)
He joined the Regiment February 17 at Grand Rapids and was wounded in the leg sometime in early May, probably during the various actions at the Wilderness or Spotsylvania, Virginia. He was transferred to Company F, 5th Michigan infantry upon consolidation of the 3rd and 5th Michigan Regiments on June 10, 1864, and was absent sick from June 2 through November of 1864. He apparently recovered his health and eventually rejoined the Regiment. According to Hiram, at a battle before Petersburg on April 2, 1865, he was hit in the left fore-arm by a musket ball which struck just below his left elbow, passing through. He was subsequently sent to City Point hospital where he remained for about three weeks and was then transferred to Lincoln hospital in Washington, DC. He remained at Lincoln hospital until he was discharged for disability on June 6 or 16, 1865, at Lincoln Hospital in Washington, DC.
After the war Hiram returned home to Sparta where he worked for many years as a farmer. In 1870 he was working as a farm laborer and living with his parents on the family farm in Sparta. In 1880 Hiram was working as a laborer and living with his older brother Ezra and his family in Sparta.
He was living in Sparta in 1883.
Hiram was living in Kent City when he married Anna Whittington (b. 1862) of Morland on January 11, 1886, in Grand Rapids (Anna had been born in Casnovia, Muskegon County); they divorced in August of 1892.
Hiram was living in Kent City, Tyrone, Kent County in 1890 and working as a day laborer and living alone in Sparta in 1900.
He was a member of the Old 3rd Michigan Infantry Association, a Protestant, and in 1880 he applied for and received pension no. 227,469, drawing $10.00 per month by 1901.
Hiram was possibly living in Hersey, Osceola County in 1901 when he was admitted as a single man to the Michigan Soldiers’ Home (no. 3620) on May 20, 1901.
Hiram was probably on furlough from the Home when he died of Bright’s Disease on August 2, 1901, in Hersey and was buried next to his parents in section 85, Englishville, Kent County.
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