David Harrison Brown, the son of Lewis Sinclair Brown and Rhoda Malissa (Neely) Brown was born in 1857 in Camden County, Missouri. His father had come from Christian County, Kentucky to Camden County in 1843 along with his brother to live with their older sister, Polly (Brown) Clinton, and her family. David grew to be a tall, handsome young man.

In 1880 David married Paulina Louisa Sweatt, the daughter of John Dennis Sweatt and Maria Louisa Simpson, who came from Tennessee and settled in Camden County about 1852. David's older brother, William Alfred Brown, had married the sister of Paulina.

David and Paulina homesteaded 160 acres in Camden County, Section 5, Township 36N, Range 15W. They tore down and removed logs from an existing old log cabin on this acreage, using horses to pull them to their new home site. The couple had five children born in this home. Two of the children died in infancy -- John Lewis died at the age of 7 months and Maude Eler at the age of 5 years. Both children were buried in Brown Cemetery on their grandfather's farm. Of the remaining children, Rhoda Maria, born 1883, married George Ervin Green in 1909 and eventually moved to California; Fred Harrison Brown, born 1888, married Floy Martin in 1918 and remained in the family home to rear his own family; and Emma Luvenia, born 1890, married Elsworth Bradley in 1920 and remained in Camden County.

David Brown's occupation was farming. He cleared the homesteaded land to raise livestock and field crops. In late summer of 1896 or 1897 David accidentally cut his foot with a wood axe, a very serious injury. In August 1898 his wife and youngest daughter had attended a funeral and were visiting with a neighbor, leaving David at home alone. When Paulina and Emma arrived home, 8 year old Emma ran ahead of her mother into the house and discovered her father lying on the kitchen floor, dead of a gunshot wound to the head and a cap and ball pistol lying nearby. The sheriff, a cousin of David Brown, was called to the scene and pronounced the death a suicide. However, David's son Fred, 10 at that time, denied it was suicide and told his own children his father was murdered by a farm hand, oral history which persists to this day.

It is possible that David Harrison Brown suffered from depression as a result of his wound and inability to support his family as he had always done; this could have led to his suicide. Another oral history story in the family is that David had become convinced he was suffering from liver cancer and thought he was dying although no doctor had given him such a diagnosis.

At any rate, after the death of David Harrison Brown, his widow, Paulina Sweatt Brown, remained on the farm, reared her children, and continued to farm. Her father, Captain John Dennis Sweatt, moved in with her to help out after David's death, enclosing part of the front porch to create a bedroom for himself. Descendants of David's uncle, John Henry Brown, offered to buy the property from her, but Paulina declined and took on the responsibility of keeping the family property and making it a productive farm. The land remains with her descendants even now.

David was buried in the Brown Cemetery with a tall obelisk on his grave. When Paulina died in 1940, the family replaced David's obelisk with a modern granite double tombstone in the Brown Cemetery.