THE ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS yj 



Very early in the nineteenth century a number of white famihes 

 settled in this valley, in the far-off dense wilderness. They called 

 the valley the " Plains of Abraham." 



In 1810, Mclntyre and several friends from Albany built the 

 North Elba Iron Works which was operated rather unsuccessfully 

 for sixteen years. 



But the early settlers had no legal right to their lands, and in 

 1840 a land. speculator forced them out of their homes. Very shortly 

 afterward, Gerrit Smith bought a large tract of land, including 

 North Elba and the Plains of Abraham. His purpose was to settle 

 the lands with free colored people, offering each family forty acres 

 for encouragement. In 1849 Smith made a present of 350 acres 

 to John Brown of Ossawattamie. This land lay on the opposite 

 (western) side of the Ausable river from North Elba. Enthusiastic 

 with the idea of a negro colony, John Brown moved his family into 

 the wilderness. With the help of colored people, he made many 

 improvements in the mountain hamlet. He purposed to make it a 

 home for the persecuted black people, but his colonization scheme 

 was a failure. Though wild in spirit, John Brown was very 

 religious, and had visions of great armies which were to march out 

 to free the slaves. When the Kansas slavery troubles started, he 

 and his sons soon got into the thickest of the fight. So, for nearly 

 ten years or until his execution in 1859, he spent comparatively little 

 time at his Adirondack home. In 1859 he made his famous attempt 

 to free the slaves by force of arms. Failing in his attempt to 

 capture the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, he was cap- 

 tured and sentenced to death. Sylvester quotes a writer in " Old 

 and New " for September 1870, as follows : " The house is unpainted 

 and plain, though equal to the ordinary farmhouses of the region. 

 It stands well up the hills, separated from the wilderness by a few 

 cleared fields, commanding a majestic view of the mountain world. 

 A few rods in front, a huge boulder, surrounded by a plain board 

 fence, is the fit monument of the fierce old apostle of liberty. At 

 its foot is the grave. The headstone was brought from an old 

 graveyard in New England, where it stood over the grave of his 

 father, Captain John Brown, who died in New York in 1776. The 

 whole stone is covered with the family inscriptions. . . . Above 

 the little grassy inclosure towers the mighty rock, almost as high 

 as the house, and on its summit is cut in massive granite characters 

 the inscription ' John Brown, 1859.' Standing on top of this monu- 

 mental rock, for the first time I felt that I comprehended the char- 



