Samuel H. Brown: Battalion Veteran Who Settled Parowan — One of the First Colonizers of Iron County, Utah (1822–1906)

Samuel H. Brown was born in 1822. He joined the Church and gathered with the Saints, enlisting in the Mormon Battalion in 1846 and serving in Company C for the duration of the march from Council Bluffs to San Diego.

After his discharge in July 1847, Brown made his way back to the Salt Lake Valley. Then, in 1850, he answered Brigham Young's call to be part of the Iron Mission — the company of settlers sent south to establish Parowan, Utah, as a base for the planned iron industry in the Great Basin.

The settlement of Parowan in the winter of 1850–51 was itself an act of faith. The settlers arrived in January, in the middle of a harsh winter, in a valley that had never been permanently inhabited by Latter-day Saints. They dug into the frozen ground, built what shelter they could, and held on.

Samuel H. Brown was among those who stayed. He helped build Parowan into a functioning community and raised his family there. His Battalion service had prepared him for exactly this: the ability to endure difficult circumstances in service of a cause he believed in.

For Latter-day Saints, the Iron Mission colonists represent a second generation of pioneer miracles — men and women who, having already crossed the plains or marched the battalion route, answered yet another call to go somewhere harder and build something new.

Brown lived in southern Utah for the remainder of his long life, dying around 1906. He had been part of two of the most remarkable collective achievements of the pioneer era: the Mormon Battalion march and the founding of Parowan.