Monday, September 19, 2011


Brown Printing Company is an outgrowth of the Barrett & Brown Company formed on Commerce Street by Milo Barrett and Warren D. Brown when they came home from the disbanded Confederate Army in the fall of 1865. They were located on Commerce next to the Exchange Hotel.

Barrett sold his interest in the firm to James H. Armstrong in September 1887 and the following month Armstrong, Warren D. Brown, William R. Hale and James H. Crenshaw formed a corporation and changed the name to Brown Printing Company.

Crenshaw, who was one of the first employees of the original company, and his family acquired all outstanding stock on May 25, 1907. In 1912, the Crenshaw’s moved Brown Printing into a three-story, 19,000-square-foot building at 255 Dexter Avenue. Crenshaw left his mark on the building with the letter ‘C’ in the top right and left corners.
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3 comments:

  1. RamblerDecember 16, 2011 at 9:02 PM

    Milo Barrett was the brother-in-law of Matthew Blue and before the Civil War was in the printing business with A. H. Wimbish, a relative of Matthew's wife, Jane Law Wimbish Blue. Barrett was the ancestor of Milo Barrett Howard, the revered director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, pareservationist and Montgomery historian from the late 1960s until his early death in 1982.

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  2. Carolyn MJWDecember 17, 2011 at 7:52 AM

    Thanks. I did already know the family connection to Milo Howard but I try to be as brief as I can in my narratives so people will want to read them. I also hope that if a fan is interested and wants to know more they will research it themselves. My goal is not to tell the whole story but just the basics. Of course, sometimes they are very long because I feel that all of it is interesting.

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  3. ravivarmaSeptember 12, 2018 at 5:41 AM

    The blog was absolutely fantastic! Great job, keep it up.
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