Beriah Brown was born in Rowley Massachusetts in 1648. At the age of thirty five he married the daughter of Abigail and Alexander Phenix of the Quidnesset section of North Kingstown. They settled nearby and built a home on South County Trail (at the intersection of Route 102 and Route 2). The early eighteenth century house was a two-story, five-bay plan building with a gambrel roof and a large center chimney.

Known as the Beriah Manor, the house existed at this location, now the site of the present day Narragansett Electric complex, for nearly 275 years until it was dismantled to make way for an indoor tennis court in the late 1960's. The Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF) acquired the house and then rebuilt and restored it at its current site on Mill Street in 1975-76.