Early Life and Career
Born in Marietta, Ohio, to an English immigrant and a Pennsylvania-born mother, Brough was orphaned at the age of 11. To support himself, he became a printer's apprentice, and later received three years of part-time education at Ohio University, where he worked part-time as a reporter for the Athens Mirror. He rose to become a newspaper publisher in Marietta and then in Lancaster, where he and his brother Charles purchased the Ohio Eagle, a paper that espoused the views of the Democratic Party.
Brough served two years as Clerk of the Ohio Senate (where he also served as the capital correspondent for his newspaper, as well as the Ohio Statesman). He was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1837, representing the Fairfield-Hocking district, and served from 1838–39, chairing the Committee on Banks and Currency. He then took office as State Auditor, serving until 1845, when the Whigs swept most of the state's Democrats out of office in the Election of 1844.
He was a trustee of Ohio University from 1840 to 1843.
In 1841, he and his brother bought the Cincinnati Advertiser and renamed it the Cincinnati Enquirer. Brough then moved to Indiana, where he entered the railroad business and became President of the Madison and Indianapolis Railway in 1848. He later presided over the Bellefontaine and Indiana Railway.
In Madison, Indiana, he was remembered for leading the railroad through a period in which it made Madison the leading pork packing city in the nation, but the line then fell prey to competition. His attempt to combat competing lines was the construction of two tunnels as part of an effort to avoid a steep incline at Madison. The company spent more than $300,000 on construction during two years, before the effort was stopped in 1855. The project was known locally as "Brough's Folly" and he left in 1853 when the Madison line underwent a short-lived merger with another railroad company.
Brough was a very large and corpulent man, as well as being a hard worker. The railroad company named one of its engines "John Brough" in his honor When it arrived in Madison on May 10, 1850, the Madison Courier of May 11 made the following comment that was printed in the Scientific American of June 1, 1850. “We are told this engine is called the John Brough on account of its great weight and for the great amount of business it is capable of doing.”
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