Amos Brown was a man of many talents. He was born in the US around the time of the Civil War, working as a child on cotton and tobacco farms in Florida and Georgia. As a youth, he was shanghaied which brought him to Britain. Eventually he arrived in Wales variously earning money as professional magician, boxer, cyclist, sprinter, miner and mountebank. Following a spell in prison for theft, he turned to pig farming and settled in the Cynon Valley.