28 Jan 1933 - 13 Jan 2007
 
After attending Saint Alban's School, he received his A.B. in history from Princeton University where he graduated magna cum laude. He served briefly in the United States Army, and attended Harvard Law School, graduating with his L.L.B. in 1959. He moved to Atlanta where he practiced law, leading numerous business, civic, philanthropic and scholarly organizations. He served on the boards of the Atlanta Historical Society, the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Civil War Commission, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Georgia Legal History Foundation. A life trustee of Mercer University, he was a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table, the Lawyer's Club of Atlanta and the Advocates, Ltd., the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, and the Atlanta Lawyers Club. He chaired the Atlanta Symposium, the Mercer University Press and the Watson-Brown Foundation. An enthusiastic supporter of the Atlanta Press Club, he was an intellectual and a respected historian, but he is perhaps remembered best as a Civil War scholar and a raconteur of the first order. The great-grandson of former Georgia U.S. Senator Thomas E. Watson, he was a lifelong Jeffersonian Democrat and a staunch defender of the South. Awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center's community service award for peace and justice.
 
He was preceded in death by his first wife, Mary Ellen McLaughlin Brown, his second wife, Anne Henderson West Brown, and two sons, John Judson Brown II and John Durham West Brown. His remaining four children: Melissa Ellen Brown Cummings of Massillon, Ohio, Thomas Watson Brown, Jr. of Evans, Georgia, Anne Georgia Lawrence Brown McCarroll of Memphis, Tennessee and Elizabeth Courtney Brown of Marietta and eight grandchildren