sentences:  In 1870 he formed a partnership with his father in the tobacco business at Shady Grove; he moved to Martinsville, Virginia in 1882 and continued in the tobacco business.He also engaged in banking and was mayor of Martinsville from 1884 to 1888.Brown was elected as a Republican to the Fiftieth Congress, serving from March 4, 1887 to March 3, 1889, winning 57.06% of the vote, defeating Democrat George Craighead Cabell; he unsuccessfully contested the election of Claude A. Swanson to the Fifty-fifth Congress.