John Brown - Saint or Lunatic?

Late in the day of October 16, the armed group of 19 men left the farm house which they had rented a few months earlier. Their mission was to attack and steal guns from the federal arsenal, a few miles away, in hopes of instigating an uprising in the Appalachian Mountains.

The initial attack at Harper Ferry was successful, that Sunday evening, there were only a few guards at the fort. African-American, a railroad baggage handler, Hayward Sheperd, was the first victim to fall fatally wounded. However, for the attackers, the situation soon turned grim as the alarm spread, local militias cut-off escape routes and federal troops arrived.

Within 48 hours, many were killed including the only U.S. Marine, Luke Quinn and the town's mayor, Fontaine Beckham, along with two residents, all in separate events. The attackers, who did not die in the assault, were captured, although five were able to escape. Months later, six of the attackers were hung for their actions. Abolitionist John Brown for many in the north became an instant martyr as he hung from the gallows for the cause of freedom; in the south, he was a despicable murderer.

John Brown, the leader of the group, already had a reputation for bloodshed in the territory of "Bleeding" Kansas, particularly in the "Pottawatomie Massacre". While John Brown's life in his violent "abolitionist" years is well documented, very little has been published about his life in Pennsylvania as a young farmer and tanner.

Brown served as a local postmaster and also worked as a surveyor in the small community of New Richmond, in Crawford County where he bought land, built a cabin and raised a family. He eventually established a local school and held church meetings in his Pennsylvania homestead and, as local tradition claims, was an important "conductor" in the Underground Railroad.

Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800. The original, restored home was destroyed by a chimney fire in 1918 but over the years it has been the site of monuments and later, in 1997 the property was designated as a Connecticut African-American Freedom Trail Site. The property was acquired by the Torrington Historical Society in 2000 in a merger with the John Brown Association.

The Brown Family left Connecticut in the spring of 1805 and settled in Hudson, Ohio where his father, Owen opened a tannery. John Brown was five years old at the time. During the winter of 1816-1817, John Brown attended classes at the Morris Academy in Litchfied County, Connecticut. He wanted to be a Congregationalist minister. However, financial problems and poor eyesight forced him to return back to his family in Hudson, Ohio, where the Brown Family, strict Calvinists, were active abolitionists and in the Underground Railroad ever since their arrival. In 1820, John Brown married Dianthe Lusk and five years later, in 1825, Brown moved to the small Pennsylvania community of New Richmond.

The land Brown bought was "Donation Land", land set aside for revolutionary war veterans as compensation for service in the war. No Revolutionary war veterans settled in the area and Pennsylvania was selling the land at reduced prices. The low cost land, on Tract 1432 was twelve miles northeast of Meadville in Crawford County and was comprised of 200 acres; the land was forested with oak and hemlock. When he arrived at his new property in May, John Brown cleared 25 acres of land, built a cabin, a large barn and a tannery. His wife and children, John Jr, five years old, Jason, age thee, and Owen six months, moved to be with him on the farm in October, 1825.

The tannery was a two story high building, the first floor was constructed of native field stone, the second floor was constructed of lumber from the property. It measured twenty-six feet by fifty feet. The plentiful oak and hemlocks were needed to help tan hides and within a few years the tannery employed 15 people.

The barn, Brown constructed had a secret room with a concealed trap door. The secret room was used to hide runaway slaves on their journey further north and into Canada. The large house also served as a community church and as a school.

John Brown also seriously thought about adopting a black child and opening a school for blacks on his farm property In a letter to his brother Frederick postmarked November 21, 1834 John Brown wrote in part: " I have for years been trying to devise some way to get a school a-going for blacks, and I think that on many accounts it would be a most favorable location."

John and Dianthe had a total of seven children, four born at the farm. They were Frederick, born January 9, 1827, Ruth, born February 18,1829 and Frederick11, born on December 31, 1830. An unnamed child was born on August 7, 1832 who died three days later, along with Dianthe, who was thirty-one years old. Both are buried at the farm, along with four year old Frederick, who died in 1832. Today, the original house and barn are gone and the tannery was largely destroyed in a fire although the stone walls still remain. The property today is now owned by Donna and Gary Coburn and has a public museum, the John Brown Museum.

On July 14, 1833, John Brown married his second wife, Mary Ann Day, then 17 years old who lived several miles away and helped her older sister take care of the Brown's children at the farm. They had a total of 13 children, but only one of them, Sarah was born at the farm on May 11, 1834.

Brown, because of economic hardship and a business offer in Ohio left Pennsylvania and moved the family to Ohio in 1835. Later, he moved to Springfield Massachusetts, where he co-founded a wool brokerage business and remained active in the abolitionist movement. In 1849 purchased a farm in upstate New York near Lake Placid.

After he was hung for the failed attack on Harper's Ferry, Mary Ann Day had him buried there. It is now a National Historic Land Site.

Owen Brown, the six month old child and the third born son to John Brown, grew up on the Brown Farm in Pennsylvania, was one of five men able to escape Harper's Ferry. He also was with his father during the Bleeding Days" of Kansas.

He died in Pasadena, California on January 8, 1889, the last survivor of the ill fated raid, which some claim sparked the Civil War. At the time of his death (listed a typhoid pneumonia) he was living on a mountaintop, aptly named Brown's Peak with a brother, Jason. Owen, who never married, was a popular figure and the funeral and burial were attended by hundreds of people.