William Brew, one of the founders of the Manx Society at Cleveland.

The society was formed in 1851 by five men with characteristically Manx names, James Christian, John Corlett, William K. Corlett, William Cubbon and William Brew, to assist and take care of the poor immigrant from the Isle of Man who arrived with an empty pocket or in feeble health. It holds an honoured place among the pioneer bodies of its kind in America.

The community it served had grown quickly. The first Manx families reached the Cleveland district in 1826, and in 1827 something like seventy families, about two hundred people in all, arrived in Ohio.