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Show Pioneer Trails Articles contributed by the S.U.P. Memorial Foundation. In the year 1852, as Captain of one of the Mormon companies traveling to Utah Territory, Jonathan Jona-than Browning migrated with his large family to the Salt Lake Valley and settled in Ogden, Weber County. On March 17, 1854, he married his second wife, Elizabeth B. Cook, and by this marriage, his second child was a boy whom he named John Moses Browning. As a resident in Ogden, Jonathan Jon-athan Browning soon became one of that city's leading citizens, be- Council, probate judge of Weber County, member of the Utah Legislature and in the ecclesiastical ecclesiasti-cal sphere was a bishop's counselor, counsel-or, member of the Weber Stake High Council and president of the High Priests' Quorum. During this entire period, he carried on his gun and blacksmith black-smith vocation and trained his growing family of boys in these activities. John M. Brownine inherited his father's talents to a remarkable degree and at the time of his death, November 26, 1926, in Liege, Belgium, while supervising the manufacturing of guns which he had invented, he was recognized recog-nized universally as the world's foremost inventor of firearms, having obtained more patents on improvements in fire-arms than any other inventor in all history. At the time of his death, Secretary Sec-retary of War, Dwight P. Davis, in a published interview concerning concern-ing the achievements of John M. Browning, stated: "It is a fact to be recorded that no design of Mr. Browning's has ever proved a failure, nor has any model been discontinued. The War Department, through its agency, uie uranance Department of the Army, will be greatly handicapped handi-capped in its future development work on automatic fire-arms as a result of the loss of Mr. Browning's Brown-ing's services. It is thought that no other individual lias contributed contrib-uted so much to the national security of this country as Mr. Browning in tho development of our macldiie guns and our automatic weapons to a state of military efficiency surpassing that down to a wide assortment of modern automatic weapons and sport shooting irons." The Salt Lake Tribune in its editoral on the release says, "His rifles, shot guns, pistols and machine guns appeared under the names of Colt, Remington, and Stevens as well as Winchester and Browning. His guns were manufactured in other narts Cif thp wnpW trt ha Tinf oi all other nations." Now, according to a recent press release of the National Patent Council, the complete story of the remarkable achievements of John Moses Browning is given in detail. Quoting from tin's release, re-lease, it states that he i'led the progress of gun design from the days of the old muzzleloadcr I that in France the word 'browning' 'brown-ing' is used as a common noun denoting automatic guns, and a plaque on the wall of a Belgian factory, where John M. Browning Brown-ing died while designing a new type of gun in 1926, reads: 'In memory of John M.' Browning . . . the greatest fire-arms inventor, . the world has ever known.' " |
