On 20 Sept. 1629 John Browne arrived at Bristol in Plymouth Colony. In 1637 he and Capt. Miles Standish laid out Cohannet (Taunton), and by 1639 he had moved there with Standish and others. In 1641 he and Standish laid out Barnstable and Yarmouth. In 1641 he and Edward Winslow purchased Rehoboth (including the present towns of Seekonk, the northern part of East Providence and Pawtucket), extending Plymouth Colony into the Wampanoag lands by purchase rather than expropriation. He became a friend of Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag Indians, and as a result the life of his son James was spared during King Philip's War in the 1670s by Massasoit's heir. By 1644 he lived in Rehoboth, where he was a neighbor of Roger Williams.
On 29 Oct. 1645 the town meeting voted that he should undertake to buy Wannamoisett (now southern East Providence and Barrington, R.I.) from the Indians for £15 worth of commodities. He settled there permanently.
He was a liberal concerning religion; in 1645 he supported William Vassall's petition and a motion to grant "full and free tolerance of religion to all men that will preserve the civil peace and submit unto the government," with "no limitation or exception against Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicolaitan, Familist, or any other". The motion failed on a tie vote.
Various records mention his shipyard, which was probably in Bullock's Cove, and numerous dealings in land. He was a member of the highest class, and his son-in-law, Mr. Thomas Willett, became in 1664 the first English Mayor of the City of New York. When Browne died of fever he was buried in Little Neck Cemetery at the head of Bullock's Cove in Wannamoisett.