page_title: William Robinson Brown
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: William Robinson Brown / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: William Robinson Brown and his wife, Hildreth Burton Smith, in 1954, one year before he died.
context_page_description: William Robinson "W. R. " Brown was an American corporate officer of the Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire. He was also an influential Arabian horse breeder, the founder and owner of the Maynesboro Stud, and an authority on Arabian horses.
  After graduating from Williams College, Brown joined the family corporation, then known as the Berlin Mills Company, and became manager of the Woods Products Division, overseeing the company's woodlands and logging operations. He became an early advocate for sustainable forest management practices, was a member of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission from 1909 until 1952, and served on the boards of several forestry organizations. As chair of the Forestry Commission, Brown helped send sawmills to Europe during World War I to assist the war effort. He was influenced by the Progressive movement, instituting employee benefits such as company-sponsored care for injured workers that predated modern workers' compensation laws. As a Republican, he served as a presidential elector for New Hampshire in 1924.
  Brown founded the Maynesboro Stud in 1912 with foundation bloodstock from some of the most notable American breeders of Arabian horses.
context_section_description: Brown believed it was important to preserve the scenic value of New Hampshire's forests. Between 1903 and 1911, he helped with efforts to establish White Mountain National Forest. Among his many civic activities, Brown promoted early legislative efforts to protect public riding trails. He also helped New Hampshire acquire Franconia Notch and Crawford Notch as public lands, and established a river conservation group in Quebec.
  A scholar of the Arabian horse, he collected a significant library of works on the breed, one of the largest collections in the United States. His papers are now kept by the Arabian Horse Owners Foundation (AHOF).  Today, the term "CMK", meaning "Crabbet/Maynesboro/Kellogg", is a label for specific lines of "Domestic" or "American-bred" Arabian horses.  It describes the descendants of horses imported to America from the desert or from Crabbet Park Stud in the late 1800s and early 1900s and then bred on in the US by the Hamidie Society, Huntington, Borden, Davenport, Brown, W. K. Kellogg, Hearst, or Dickinson.
caption: Hildreth and W. R. Brown, 1954
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