Charles Henry Brown was born into slavery in the 1840's, in St. Mary's County, Maryland.
He was one of the original members of the First Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. The regiment was formed in 1863 in Washington, D.C. As a young man of 22, Charles Henry Brown enlisted into the Union Army on June 28, 1863 at Mason's Island (now Theodore Roosevelt Island). He fought in many battles and was wounded in one of those battles. Charles Henry Brown returned home in 1865 as a sergeant in the First United States Colored Troops Regiment and built his home in Nanjemoy, Maryland in Charles County, where his son William Henry Brown once lived. Sgt. Charles Henry Brown, a U.S. Civil War veteran died in 1895. He was just one of tmany free and enslaved brave black men who fought for the right to be free.