Historian Details How Stoneham's Annie Brown Built Fortune and Funded Library Wing

STONEHAM — September 30, 2021 — Historian Dee Morris presented a detailed portrait of Stoneham philanthropist Annie Hamilton Brown at a September 30 community access program hosted by the Stoneham Public Library. Morris, introduced by Library Director Nicole Langley, drew on digitized issues of Stoneham's 19th-century newspaper The Independent and cemetery records to reconstruct Brown's life: born in 1869 into the wealthy Tidd tanning family, educated at the LaSalle Seminary in Auburndale, and self-made through systematic stock-market investment. Brown co-founded the Stoneham Animal Shelter around 1910, donated a bronze electric-lit drinking fountain for animals in Central Square — later destroyed by vandals — and at her 1929 death left $100,000 to the Stoneham Public Library, funding the addition that contains today's children's room and cupola, plus $25,000 to the Massachusetts Audubon Society that purchased land now preserved as the Annie H. Brown Wildlife Sanctuary on Plum Island and the Annie Brown Reservation at the Ipswich River Sanctuary. The program was sponsored by the Stoneham Cultural Council with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.