John Nicholas Brown II

John Nicholas Brown II (February 21, 1900 – October 10, 1979) was the United States Assistant Secretary of the Navy (AIR) from 1946 to 1949. He was a member of the Brown family that had been active in American life since before the American Revolution and who were the major early benefactors of Brown University. Early life He was born in New York City on February 21, 1900, to John Nicholas Brown I (1861–1900), who died on May 1 of the same year, and Natalie Bayard Dresser (1869–1950), daughter of Civil War Veteran and civil engineer Brevet Major George Warren Dresser and Elizabeth Stuyvesant LeRoy. Brown grew up in Newport, Rhode Island, and attended St. George's School, from which he graduated in 1918. Brown served briefly in the United States Navy during the closing days of the First World War as a seaman. Upon attaining his majority in 1921, Brown succeeded his father as an hereditary member of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati by right of his descent from his 2x great-granduncle Major Simeon Thayer. He then attended Harvard College, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1922, and a master's degree in 1928. Family His paternal grandfather was John Carter Brown (1797–1874), the son of Nicholas Brown Jr. (1769–1841), the namesake patron of Brown University (in 1804), who was a collector of American books in the mid-19th century and was the first American to join the Hakluyt Society as a charter member in 1846, and in 1855, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. His 2x great-grandfather was Nicholas Brown Sr. (1729–1791), brother of John Brown, Moses Brown, and Joseph Brown, who was a merchant and slave trader who co-founded the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.