Edith West Brown was born in 1914. She lived in Ansley Park, Georgia, and was a member of the Habersham Daughters of the American Revolution and the Georgia Music Teachers Association. She and her husband, Bennie W. Brown, owned and operated Brown’s Variety Store. The couple had three daughters: Jimmie, Betty, and Alice. While attending Morningside Baptist Church and Druid Hills Baptist Church, Brown developed an interest in the Baptist Missions effort in China.

This interest inspired Brown to wrote a biography of Silas Emmet Stephens (1874-1926), a Southern Baptist missionary to China in the early 1900s. Emmet Stephens was a graduate of Mercer University, and he and his wife, Irene, were both native Georgians. Irene Carter Stephens and Lelah Carter Morgan were sisters, and their husbands became friends while at seminary. The biography is titled A Strawberry Vine for China. When it seemed obvious that Ms. Brown would never be able to complete this work, the Stephens’ nephew, Carter Morgan, suggested that she place her research materials in the Georgia Baptist History Depository. He had already provided the Depository with materials related to his parents, Edgar L. and Lelah Carter Morgan, also Baptist missionaries to China. Ms. Brown accepted the suggestion, and the Depository received her papers in July 1998 and May 1999. Additional materials were received in April 2000, and then several chapters of A Strawberry Vine for China were received in March 2003.

Edith West Brown died on Thursday 9, 2005, in Roswell, Georgia.