“…J. M. Brower started me in the manufacturing of tobacco, giving me 1/3 net profit, the firm being C. A. Raine & Co. We continued business under many difficulties and without success until 1878, when Mr. Brower sold out lock, stock, and barrel.”
-From Charles Anderson Raine’s Autobiography
In his autobiography, Charles Anderson Raine makes two fleeting mentions of a man named J.M.. Brower. He was Raine’s employer for a short while and “started” him in the tobacco business. Who was this man who is mentioned briefly but had an outsized role in the formation C.A. Raine & Co.?
Charles Anderson Raine, 14, was devastated when his mother died in 1855. Soon after, the family was scattered. Charles left school and got a job as a clerk for a railroad contractor in what is now West Virginia. His little sisters were sent to live with an aunt in North Carolina. In a way, this tragedy provided the opportunity Charles needed to start in the tobacco business years later.
Census records show that in 1860 Charles’ sisters, Nannie M. Raine, 13, and Bettie Raine, 9, were living with Sallie N. Smallwood, their maternal aunt on a farm in northern Rockingham County, North Carolina, near the Virginia state line. Sallie is listed as the head of household; she was likely a widow. At this point, the two girls may have already lived with their aunt for several years.
In his autobiography, Charles writes about visiting his aunt and beloved teenage sisters in North Carolina while on furlough from the Confederate army in 1863 and in the summer of 1865 after the war ended.
In 1867, Nannie Raine, then 19 years old, married John Morehead (J.M.) Brower in Rockingham County. The Brower family operated a store there. J.M’s father Jacob W. Brower founded a large retail and manufacturing operation about 60 miles to the west in Mt. Airy, Surry County, North Carolina, on the state line with Virginia.
The 1880 industrial census lists the Browers as owning two grist and flour mills, a shoe factory and tannery, a cotton mill, a wool mill, and a saw mill, all located on and powered by the Ararat River. The Browers were a wealthy and influential family in that part of North Carolina. Jacob Brower died in 1868, the year after J.M. and Nannie married. Control of the family businesses, now styled J.M Brower & Bro., passed to J.M. and his brother.
The first time that Charles Anderson Raine and J.M. Brower crossed paths in a business sense was in 1871 when, after giving up on farming for his father-in-law, Charles moved to Mt. Airy to work for J.M. Brower & Bro. as a store clerk for $50 a month, eventually bringing his wife Bettie with him.
Charles left for a new start in Danville after a year or less but it was J.M. Brower who bankrolled Charles’ first foray into the tobacco business three years later in 1874. The venture was unsuccessful and Brower sold his interest four years later in 1878. Likely, the challenges of that first run at tobacco manufacturing taught Charles many valuable lessons.
So, the mystery of J.M. Brower or Mr. Brower from the autobiography is solved. He was Charles Anderson Raine’s brother-in-law. Perhaps the relationship is not mentioned in the autobiography because C.A. Raine’s children, his audience, already knew Brower as their uncle. Regardless, the story of J.M. Brower doesn’t end there.
J.M. Brower was an ambitious man and quickly turned to politics after the Civil War aligning with the Republican party. Until large-scale suppression of African American voting rights after 1900, the Republican party was a powerful force in North Carolina; it depended on a coalition of Blacks and Whites to wield power and most white Republican voters came from the piedmont and western portions of the state.
Brower won an election to the North Carolina state senate (1876-1878) and then was elected twice to the U.S. House of Representatives (1887-1891). In 1889 he made a play to become the Speaker of the House according to the Statesville (NC) Record and Landmark newspaper but was unsuccessful. After leaving Washington D.C., he was elected to a single term in the North Carolina House of Representatives (1896-1898).
J.M. Brower was held in high regard in Mt. Airy and Surry County but he, and most white Republicans, was hated with a passion by Democrats in the state. North Carolina newspapers of the time, especially those in the eastern half of the state, portrayed Brower as a traitor and used racist language to describe him and his constituents. It is likely that he and his family were in personal danger at times.
In 1907, Brower left North Carolina with his family to farm and started new businesses in Boswell, Choctaw County, Oklahoma. In the 1910 census his occupation is listed as “private income.” He died in 1913 and was buried in Mt. Airy. Two of his sons remained and settled in Texas, another joined government service abroad. The rest of the family relocated to Mt. Airy. Nannie Raine Brower lived with two of her daughters and died of senility and myocarditis on March 27, 1938, at the age of 90.
Sources:
1860 U.S. Census, Northern Division, Rockingham County, North Carolina, population schedule, Wentworth post office, p. 32, dwelling 229, family 224.
1880 U.S. Census, Mt. Airy, Surrey County, North Carolina, industrial schedule, Mt. Airy post office, p. 1.
1910 U.S. Census, Hunter Township, Choctaw County, Oklahoma, population schedule, Boswell, p. 20.
“Brower, John Morehead 1845-1913.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, n.d., https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/B000898
Certificate of Death for Nannie Raine Brower, 26 March 1938, Certificate Number 29, Mt. Airy, North Carolina.
“Ewart and Cheatham Will Not Help Brower.” Statesville Record and Landmark, Statesville, N.C., 25 July 1889. Newspapers.com.
“Hamburg Mills,” Mt. Airy Museum of Regional History, n.d., https://www.northcarolinamuseum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143:hamburg-mills-and-brower-bridge&catid=49:virtual-exhibits&Itemid=147
“Hon. John M. Brower Passes.” Surrey County (N.C.) News, 7 August 1913. Surrey County Digital Heritage. https://surrydigitalheritage.org/s/surry-digital-heritage/item/26599
Raine, Charles Anderson. Autobiography, 11 February 1897.
Rockingham County (N.C.) Marriage Register 1811-1948.
C.A. Raine & Co. 
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