A FASCINATING history of one man's life has emerged due to a Weymouth man's tenacity to find out more about his great-grandfather.

James Alexander Browne was a musician, composer, author, actor, editor, publisher and teacher and lived from 1838 to 1914.

Geoff Browne has been on a long-term quest to find out more about his relative, who packed so much into his 76 years.

Remarkably, he managed to find a Victorian diary written by James completely by chance.

Geoff said: "We were searching for them for 10 years. My brother saw a Victorian diary for sale

"We found out a lot of information about James Alexander Browne at Glasgow University library and saw a lot of his writings.

"We came across the diary for sale in Lincoln completely by chance. We got in touch with the person who bought them and spent some time chatting to him and managed to buy it off him for £1,000."

All in all there are 23 volumes of James's diary - and Geoff has now acquired three of them.

The well preserved personal diary contains regular entries of James' life including his thoughts on parties - Thursday 12th January 1860

"Played at Mr Kelly’s Ball. I am getting tired of, and disgusted with, parties but they enable me to live pretty comfortably."

The diary gives a real flavour of James's life. He was born on May 9, 1838, in Artillery Place, Woolwich.

He was the eldest of six children and came from a military family - his grandfather John Browne joined the 6th Dragoon Guards in 1798.

James assumed the middle name if Alexander at his father's request, following the death of his half brother at the battle of Inkerman.

On December 8 1848 at the age of 10, James joined the Royal Artillery at Woolwich as a choirboy, but soon progressed to musical instruments.

He vividly describes the first formal parade that he attended when the parade Ground was struck by lightning and one of the musicians was killed and two seriously injured.

James was stationed in Portland when he was in the Navy,

He got married to Catherine Murray on May 8 1858. By 1859 he was recognised as a good flautist and violinist and played in the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace that year.

He also kept up with current affairs and wrote an article for a national newspaper on the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic in the autumn of 1861. In 1865 he published a history of the Royal Artillery, for which he received considerable criticism as it was entitled England's Artillerymen rather than Britain's Artillerymen. He had to write a letter to a newspaper saying he didn't mean to cause offence!

In 1866 James left the Army and moved from Woolwich to Sutton in Surrey. He re-enlisted in the Army on April 18 1868 and was a military bandsmen for eight years.

A new unit was formed - the Royal Horse Artillery Band - and James became the first ever bandmaster of that regiment. He took the post because his income was insufficient - £43 the previous year.

James then left the Army for a second time in 1878 and played a variety of instruments in theatre orchestras all over London for the next 19 years.

Between 1874 and 1875 James wrote three articles, the last - The Brownes of English History - something he was hoping to submit to publishers as a book, but it was decided it wouldn't be commercially successful.

In 1888 James became a full-time journalist and was the editor of several publications on music and the military.

His wife Catherine died in 1908 and was buried on what would have been their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

Throughout his life James kept diaries and following a severe bout of bronchitis in 1908 wrote his autobiography Sixty Years of a Busy Life using extracts from his diaries.

Although the autobiography covers 536 pages it includes very little personal information about James's family life and generally only makes references to his wife or one of his eight children during times of illness, which prevented him from working.

*Thanks to Geoff Browne and family for all their research into the fascinating life of their family member.

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