Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brown, William (1766-1835)
BROWN, WILLIAM, D.D. (1766–1835), historical writer, was born in 1766. He was licensed by the presbytery of Stirling in 1791, was presented to the parish of Eskdalemuir by the Duke of Buccleuch in 1792, and fulfilled there the duties of minister for forty-three ears, ln 1797 he married Margaret Moffat, by whom he had three children. He received the degree of D.D. from the university of Aberdeen in 1816, and died on 2l Sept. 1835. He was the author of the ‘Antiquities of the Jews’ (2nd ed. 1826, 2 vols.), and Wrote the ‘Account of the Parish of Eskdalemuir’ in the ‘Statistical Account of Scotland,’ His work on the Jews enters with great detail into their customs and religious ceremonials, but barely touches upon their political history or ethnical peculiarities.
[Hew Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Sooticanæ, vol. i. part ii. 635; Gent. Mag. new series, iv. 554; Chambers's Historical Newspaper.]