Prentiss M. Brown

Prentiss Marsh Brown (June 18, 1889 – December 19, 1973) was an American lawyer and politician who served three full and one partial term as a Democratic U.S. Representative and Senator from the state of Michigan from 1936 to 1943.

Biography

Brown was born in St. Ignace, Michigan and attended the public schools there. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and graduated from Albion College in Albion, Michigan in 1911. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1914 and commenced practice in St. Ignace.

Personal life Brown married Marion Walker in 1916. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1942.

After Congress In December 1942, Roosevelt selected Brown to take over as administrator of the Office of Price Administration, replacing Leon Henderson, whose tenure as administrator was listed as one of the major reasons for Democratic losses in the 1942 elections. and was the city attorney for St. Ignace for 50 years. Paul Walker Brown was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan from 1971 until 1994, and ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1974. His import was so great that his visage was placed on a special memorial bridge token created by the Mackinac Bridge Authority. In 2004, Albion College renamed its Honors Institute the Prentiss M. Brown Honors Institute in memory of the 1911 alumnus. Between 1976 and 2001, the stretch of Interstate 75 between the Mackinac Bridge and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, was known as the Prentiss M. Brown Memorial Highway. Since 2001, the Prentiss M. Brown Memorial Highway is designated as the name of I-75 in Mackinac County on the north side of the Mackinac Bridge. He is prominently featured in the PBS documentary "Building the Mighty Mac" by LA filmmaker Mark Howell.