Brown, Samuel & Son
Record IDcni00052194
URIhttp://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/cni00052194
Last Edit2014-03-14
General Note
Samuel Brown, the eighth son of the Reverend John Brown of Haddington, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible and Jane Nimmo was born 30 April 1779. He was apprenticed to John Croumbie at the age of 11. The Sketch says that Croumbie was an ironmonger, but Some account says that he was a wholesale merchant to the chapmen. Self-educated, Samuel Brown built a schoolroom and taught a School on Sunday evenings. He went into partnership with John Croumbie in 1804. In 1806 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Duncan of Comely Gardens. In 1817, he started his itinerating libraries. He bought 200 volumes, about two-thirds of which were of a moral tendency, divided them into four lots of fifty volumes each, and stationed them in the villages of Aberlady, Saltoun, Tyninghame and Garvald in the care of volunteer librarians. They were removed every two years and replaced with the books in one of the other villages. The success of the scheme in the first four years encouraged hm to extend it. In 1823 he extended the scheme to the whole of East Lothian. By 1836, there were 47 libraries and 2,380 volumes in circulation. The supply of books was paid for by using them as a subscription library in Haddington and the other towns for two years, before transferring the stock to the itinerating libraries. The scheme thus paid for itself. The scheme was tried in many other places with varying success, but only in East Lothian, under the management of its originator, did it prove a complete success. In 1833, he was elected Provost of Haddington. He died 13 July 1839.
More Information
Dates of Activity1804-1837
Activitybookseller and circulating library
Related Entries
See alsoJohn Croumbie and Samuel Brown, ironmongers, Haddington (1804 - 1816)
Names
HeadingBrown, Samuel & Son
used in: National Library of Scotland, Scottish Book Trade Index
Variant NameSamuel Brown, ironmonger, Haddington (1816 - 2323)
Samuel Brown, Manager East Lothian Itinerating Library (1837)
Back Street, **Haddington
Sources
Found inPigot 1837. — “Sketch of the late Mr Samuel Brown, of Haddington, extracted from the United Session Magazine for December, 1839”. Edinburgh, 1839. — “Some Account of Itinerating Libraries and their Founder”. Edinburgh, 1856. — William Brown. “Memoir relative to Itinerating Libraries”. 2nd ed. Edinburgh [1830?]. — Samuel Brown. “Itinerating Libraries for Morayshire”. [Haddington, 1831?] this gives practical details not in William Brown's Memoir