Arthur Brown (politician)

Arthur Brown

Arthur Brown (born March 8, 1843 in Kalamazoo , Michigan , † December 12, 1906 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician who represented the state of Utah in the US Senate .

biography

Early life

Arthur Brown was born on a farm and grew up in a modest family. When he was 13 years old, his family moved in 1856 to Yellow Springs ( Ohio ), where the Brown Antioch College graduated. Two years later, in 1864, he graduated in law at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor .

Political career

Brown opened a law firm in his native Kalamazoo and married for the first time. Her marriage to Mrs. LC Brown had a daughter, Alice. But the handsome man, who had a thing for women, entered into an extramarital relationship with Isabel Cameron, the daughter of a Michigan senator. When the affair became public, his first wife was divorced. In 1879 Brown moved to Salt Lake City , Utah , where he hoped to be appointed attorney general. When this failed, however, Brown opened a private law firm and married Isabel Cameron, who had his son Max.

After Utah was declared a state on January 4, 1896, Brown ran for the Republicans with success for a seat in the United States Senate and took office three weeks later, on January 22, 1896, to. His term of office was barely a year and a half and ended on March 3, 1897.

death

As early as 1892, Brown, who was 49 years old at the time, met Anne Maddison Bradley, who was only 19 years old, with whom he also entered into an extramarital relationship. Bradley, a secretary by profession, was married to Brown and had two children with her husband Clarence Bradley, whom she married on September 20, 1893.

Around 1898, Bradley left her husband and moved to the vicinity of Brown, with whom she had fallen in love. And even the Senator was not averse to dating her, and she said she gave Bradley an engagement ring.

In 1902 Brown separated from his second wife, Isabel, but not divorced. Isabel Brown then hired a private investigator to shadow her husband and Anne Bradley. Arthur Brown and Bradley were arrested twice - in September 1902 and January 1903 - for adultery . A bitter war of the roses followed , during which the two opponents even confronted in a hotel in Pocatello ( Idaho ), where Isabel Brown even threatened Alice Bradley with killing.

When Isabel Brown died of cancer on August 22, 1905 , the road for Bradley's longed-for marriage to the former Senator seemed at hand after she divorced her husband. But Brown took his time and suddenly seemed to reject all declarations of love.

In early December 1906 Brown went on a business trip to Washington, on which Anne Bradley accompanied him. She fell from the clouds when she found love letters from a young woman named Annie Adams Kiskadden, the mother of future actress Maude Adams, in Brown's possession . Believing Brown and Kiskadden would marry soon afterwards, Bradley confronted him with the letters on December 8, 1906, delusional accusing him of being the illegitimate father of their two children. But the argument escalated when Bradley drew a pistol and shot Brown. Although the doctors fought for four days for Brown's life, Brown died from his injuries on December 12, 1906.

Aftermath

The trial of Anne Bradley opened on November 13, 1907 and ended in an acquittal on December 3, 1907. The jury saw it as proven that the 34-year-old had acted in self-defense.

Anne Bradley moved back to Utah, opened an antique shop in Salt Lake City, and died there on November 11, 1950, at the age of 77.

Web links

• Arthur Brown in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)