Biography

Stephen Noble Brown (1844-1927)

Stephen Noble Brown was born in Glasgow in 1844 and arrived at Port Chalmers on the Lady Egidia in January 1861. After joining the goldrush to Gabriel’s Gully, he went to Invercargill where he joined the staff of the Invercargill Times.

Brown married Margaret Sloan in 1870 and had a family of six daughters and two sons.

In 1875 he purchased the Cromwell Argus, which he controlled for a period of twelve years, at the end of which, he moved to Dunedin and commenced business as a printer. With his family he settled at his home Oreti on the lower corner of Brownville Crescent and Highgate ca. 1894 and became very committed to the affairs of the Maori Hill district. Brownville Crescent was named after him. The first Chairman of the Maori Hill School Committee, a position he held for twenty years, Brown was Mayor of Maori Hill from 1906-1908 and also served as a borough councillor. A founding member and vice-president of the Balmacewen Bowling, Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, he was also a familiar and popular figure on the bowling green. Brown also served as Chairman of the Maori Hill Fire Board for seven years and was involved in many facets of the suburb’s development during the most progressive period in the Borough’s history.

When he died at his home in Maori Hill in 1927, Stephen Brown was one of the suburb’s best-known residents. His daughter Miss Jane Katherine Brown was a teacher at Maori Hill School from 1907-1925.

Reference: Above the Belt: a History of the suburb of Maori Hill by Jane Smallfield and Brian Heenan (for the Maori Hill Charitable Trust), Otago Uni Print 2006.