The son of a pioneer Seattle newspaperman, Ashmun Brown began his career in journalism in 1890 as a reporter in Seattle. For the next fifteen years he held reporting and editorial positions with newspapers in Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, Victoria, Spokane, Butte and Anaconda. From 1905 to 1907 he was Private Secretary to Governor Albert Mead of Washington, after which he relocated at Washington, D.C., beginning his career as a capitol reporter. He left reporting in 1910 and 1911 to serve as Private Secretary to Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger and, after a short interlude as a periodical editor, returned to reporting the news of the national capitol for his former employer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
From 1914 until his retirement in the early 1940's, Brown was the Washington Bureau correspondent successively for the Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times and the Providence (R.I.) Journal and Evening Bulletin. During this time he wrote about 25,000 stories, features and columns. His reporting tended to reflect his Republican connections in Washington, but was characterized by a proper journalistic non-partisanship. His coverage of national administrations of both political parties and of the Washington and Rhode Island delegations to Congress, both having members of each party, was quite complete. This thoroughness of reporting earned him a citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee in 1936.
This collection consists of scrapbooks of clippings of journalist Ashmun Norris Brown's output of newspaper articles, stories, features and regular columns as Washington correspondent for Seattle and Providence (Rhode Island) newspapers. His stories offer close examination of Washington State and Rhode Island congressional delegations, as well as coverage of naval affairs, the Department of Interior, the Territory of Alaska, and personalities in politics and government. The collection also includes a small amount of personal material, including photographs, correspondence, and memorabilia.
The 35 scrapbooks of news stories are arranged in three chronological series. Series 1, 1914-1923, contains Brown's stories as the Washington correspondent of the two Seattle newspapers. Series 2, 1920-1942, consists of the stories and columns he wrote for the Providence papers. Series 3 contains two scrapbooks of stories written 1916-1917, some of which were carried by the Washington, D.C., Star. Series 4 is a scrapbook with a mixture of personal and professional items, 1890-1946.
This collection is open for research use.
[Item Description]. Cage 54, Ashmun Norris Brown Scrapbooks . Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
The news stories of Ashmun Brown (1872-1948), Washington D. C. journalist, were acquired by Washington State University Library In 1958 as a gift from Mr. Brown's nephew, Nat Brown of Yakima, Washington.In 2014, Dennis Holzman Antiques donated two additional scrapbooks (MS.2014.24): Brown's final volume of stories (item 32.1), and a scrapbook of memorabilia, correspondence, photographs, and clippings (items 35.1-35.4).
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.