Captain A. Browne
(1836-1916)
5 January 1862
Volume 5, page 301, sitting number 6697.
[The sitter is identified as 'Captain A. Browne' in the Silvy daybooks. He returned to the studio on 17 March 1863 for two more sittings, one wearing full dress uniform and one wearing service dress. Hart's Army List (1862) has three officers who would have been A. Browne. The first is an army doctor who was a medical assistant in 1808; he would have been much older than this man. The second is a Major with the brevet rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. And the third is a Captain in the 2nd (North British) Regiment of Dragoons, known as the Scots Greys, who is not only the right rank but whose uniform would have been consistent with that seen in the 1863 portraits.]
Born at Killough in County Down on 12 June 1836, Andrew Smythe Montague Brown was the eldest son of Peter Rutledge Montague Browne, Esq., of Janeville, Killough, County Down.
He joined the Army from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as an Ensign (without purchase) in the 56th Foot. He transferred to the 2nd Dragoons (Scots Greys) as a Cornet (paying the difference) in December 1853.
In 1864 his father died and he inherited Janeville, a substantial late-Georgian residence on the coast of County Down, which he renamed St John’s House.
On 6 September 1872 in the Musselburgh Episcopal Church ‘in the presence of a highly fashionable assembly’ he married Alice Jane Fergusson, only child of the late Colonel James Duncan Alexander Fergusson ‘of the Bengal army’ (Downpatrick Recorder, 7 September 1872).
On 24 November 1877 Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Smythe Montague Browne was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel on his transfer from the 2nd Dragoon Guards to the 3rd Dragoon Guards.
In 1905 he transferred back to the 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) with the rank of Colonel.
He died, aged 80, on 8 March 1916.
‘The death has occurred at his residence St John’s Point, Killough, County Down, Ireland, of Major-General Andrew Smythe Montague Browne, who has been hon. colonel of the Royal Scots Guards since 1906.
‘General Browne, who was born in 1836, entered the army in 1853, and fought with his regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, at Balaclava and Sebastopol, for which he held the medal with clasp and the Turkish medal. He was promoted Major-General in 1893, and retired in 1897. Major-General Browne was hon. colonel of the 3d Dragoon Guards from 1903 to 1905, and for some time commanded the 49th Berkshire Regimental District. He was a High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant of County Down, and was a well-known breeder of horses.
‘Major-General Browne leaves one son and five daughters’ (Dundee Evening Telegraph, 09 March 1916).