Meshach Browning was born in Damascus, Montgomery County, Maryland. Meshach Browning's father was an English soldier who escaped from Braddock's massacre (1755), deserted and settled in the highlands of Western Maryland. This community was a wholly self-subsistent one in which the men wore deer skins procured by their own rifles and dressed and tailored by themselves. The women spun and wove flax and wool. The only commodities upon which they were dependent on outsiders were gunpowder and lead for shot. Meshach Browning married Mary McMullen (1781–1839) on April 13, 1799 at Blooming Rose, Maryland. After his first wife's death, he married Mary M. Smith, on 24 April 1841 in Allegany County, Maryland.