A history of Ashton Villa

James Moreau Brown (1821-1895) was born in New York, the youngest of sixteen children of John M. and Hannah Krantz Brown. He left New York, ca. 1838 and worked his way across South Carolina, stayed awhile at New Orleans and at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and settled in the new city of Galveston, Texas, in the mid 1840s. There he became a successful and influential businessman. He married Rebecca Ashton Stoddart Rhodes, daughter of John Aston and Sarah Stoddart, and step daughter of C. K. Rhodes, at Galveston in 1848. They had five children, 1848-1866. J.M. Brown built "Ashton Villa" a large brick home for his family in 1859. Record chiefly tells of the Brown life at Ashton Villa, details of the house, and the social life of the city that centered around the house from the 1860s to the 1920s.