Francis Shunk Brown

His law practice clients included many Pennsylvania politicians Israel Wilson Durham, Boies Penrose, and the William Scott Vare.^[2]

In 1915, he was appointed state Attorney General and served until 1919. After completing his term, he returned to private practice.

In 1930, he was persuaded by state Republican party leaders including William Scott Vare to run in the primary against former state governor Gifford Pinchot. Ending Prohibition was the dominant issue, and in public Brown took a lukewarm position, favoring a state referendum to consider modifying the Volstead Act.^[3] In private, he supported repeal but could not come out in public against prohibition due to his political connections to President Herbert Hoover. One minor contender, Thomas Wharton Phillips Jr. was openly anti prohibition. Pinchot was a prohibitionist who in his previous term as governor did almost nothing to enforce Prohibition, and so ended up attracting strong anti-prohibition support against Brown and Phillips, winning the primary by 20,000 votes over Brown, and later the state election.^[4]

During the primary, in contrast to the other candidates (Gifford Pinchot, Thomas Wharton Phillips Jr., Joseph R. Grundy), Brown declined to take part in an open discussion about Republican issues sponsored by the Pennsylvania League of Woman Voters because they invited Joseph D. Herben, a Negro candidate. He stated: "I refuse to discuss state politics on the same platform with a Negro."^[5]

In 1883, he married Elizabeth Hamm. They had two children, one son and one daughter. The son, Francis Shunk Brown Jr., would serve as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas.

Brown was an avid yachtsman, and served as commodore of the Philadelphia Yacht Club. He owned and worked part-time on a farm on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. He once owned a camp along Lake Placid.^[6]