John Robert Brown (January 14, 1842 – August 4, 1927) was a United States representative from Virginia.

Biography

Born near Snow Creek, Franklin County, Virginia, he attended private schools in Franklin and Henry Counties and entered the Confederate Army in 1861 as a private in Company D, Twenty-fourth Regiment of Virginia Volunteers. In 1870 he formed a partnership with his father in the tobacco business at Shady Grove; he moved to Martinsville, Virginia in 1882 and continued in the tobacco business. He also engaged in banking and was mayor of Martinsville from 1884 to 1888. Brown was elected as a Republican to the Fiftieth Congress, serving from March 4, 1887, to March 3, 1889, winning 57.06% of the vote, defeating Democrat George Craighead Cabell; he unsuccessfully contested the election of Claude A. Swanson to the Fifty-fifth Congress. He reengaged in the tobacco business and retired from active business pursuits; Brown died in Martinsville, with interment in Oakwood Cemetery.