JOHN BROWN 
John Brown was born at Torrington, Conn., May 9, 1800. 
He was of good New England stock, being of the sixth gen- 
eration from Peter Brown, an English carpenter who came 
over in the May flow 67^ and who signed the famous compact in 
the cabin of that vessel. When about five years of age he 
was taken to Ohio. His youth was uneventful. At the age 
of twenty he was married.^ Several years later his first wife 
died and he married again. Twenty children were born of 
these two marriages.- He was by turns a tanner, a surveyor, 
a sheep farmer, and a wool merchant, but was unsuccessful in 
everything, went thru bankruptcy, and in 1842 did time in the 
county jail at Akron, Ohio.^ In 1849 he went to North Elba, 
N.Y., where at this time his “body lies a-mouldering in the 
grave”.‘^ 
When about forty years of age he seems to have adopted 
opposition to slavery as the great purpose of his life.® He 
was not influenced by any of the usual motives which con- 
trol men, such as wealth, fame, or power. To him slavery 
was the sum of all villainies, and to resist it was the most 
noble of all purposes. 
In 1854, four of his sons and other of his kindred joined 
the ever-increasing procession of emigrants moving to the 
westward and settled in Kansas.® They did not go to fight, 
but they did believe that the territory should be free. They 
built their humble cabins on Pottawatomie Creek and hoped 
to make homes for themselves in peace, but this was not to be. 
The proslavery marauders were coming into the territory at 
this time in considerable numbers for the avowed purpose of 
insulting, plundering, and driving out the men who believed 
that the soil of Kansas should be free. 
^ John Brown, Autobiography ; James Redpath, Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 
1860), 24-35. 
“ F. B. Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885), 40, 41. 
“^Ihid., 55. 
■* Ibid., 97. 
5 /bid., 39. 
« Ibid., 202. 
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