"Daniel Browne, eldest child of Daniel Browne, and grandson of Eleazar and Sarah (Bulkley) Brown, of New Haven, was born April 26, 1698, and graduated at the very early age of 16½ years. His father lived in what later became the parish of West Haven, now included in the town of Orange. His mother was Mary, daughter of Ephraim How, Jr., of New Haven. A younger brother graduated in 1729.
In 1715 he appears to have been the assistant of Samuel Cooke (Y. C. 1705), the Rector of the Hopkins Grammar School, of New Haven, and when Cooke relinquished his position at the end of the year, Browne succeeded him, and continued in that office, at an annual salary of £60, until appointed tutor in the College in New Haven, in September, 1718. He at once entered on his new duties, his senior colleague for the first year being his classmate and intimate friend, Samuel Johnson. In 1719, Johnson retired, and for the next three years the instruction was in the hands of Rector Cutler and Mr. Browne.
The studies pursued by Cutler, Browne, Johnson, and a few others, in the books lately added to the College Library, brought them to the public declaration, September 13, 1722, of their doubts of the validity of Presbyterian ordination. As Browne stood firm in his avowal of Episcopal doctrines, the resignation of his tutorship was accepted, October 17, and on the 5th of November he sailed from Boston, with Cutler and Johnson, to obtain orders in England. They arrived in the Thames on December 15, and after spending the winter in London were ordained Deacons, March 22, 1723, in the parish church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, by Dr. Green, Bishop of Norwich; on the 31st of the month, they were advanced to the priesthood, by the same prelate, at the same place. Cutler had just recovered from the small-pox, and on the 4th of April Browne fell sick of the same malady. He died on the 13th, and was buried in the church of St. Dunstan-in-the West, on the 16th. The annual Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, published a few weeks later, contain a notice of his death and of the payment by the Society of £37. 16 s., on account of his sickness and the charges at his funeral. Johnson in his Diary exclaims : 'I have lost the best friend in the world,—a fine scholar, and a brave Christian.' He was unmarried. A few weeks before he sailed for Europe, his father died in New Haven.
His MS. correspondence (in English and Latin) with Johnson is preserved by the Johnson family. President Stiles, writing in 1765 of Cutler, Johnson, Wetmore, and Browne, says of the last, 'he was a gentleman of the most superior sense and learning of the four.' He also adds (and his birthplace in a neighboring parsonage in 1727 gave him facilities for knowledge), 'Mr. Cutler, Johnson, and Wetmore were very rigid in their Episcopal sentiments; but Mr. Brown was so nearly convinced' by Gov. Saltonstall's reasoning 'that it was with the utmost difficulty they persuaded him to accompany them to England.'"
