Young Mr. Brown, Young Mr. Lincoln: A Chronology of 1800-1835

I have taken the liberty of utilizing an original chronology prepared by James T. Hickey, the Curator of the Lincoln Collection, of the Illinois State Historical Library.  It was published in 1990 by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in Springfield, Ill.  You may read the Hickey chronology on the Internet Archive on this link.  I have simply combined it with my own chronological notes on John Brown's first thirty-five years.  I have made no modifications or changes to Hickey's Lincoln material. --LD

JOHN BROWN                                     ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1800

May 9.   “John was born May 9th 1800, at Torrington.

Litchfield Co, Connecticut. . . .” John Brown’s autobiographical

sketch, July-Aug. 1857

1805

 

July 7.  Brown arrives in Hudson, Ohio, on

Connecticut’s Western Reserve lands, having

departed Connecticut on June 9.

1808

Dec. 9. John’s mother, Ruth Mills Brown, dies

in childbirth.  “At Eight years old John was

left a Motherless boy.”  There are five

children in the family, including an adopted

son named Levi Blakeslee.

1809

Feb. 12.   "I was born Feb. 12, 1809 in then Hardin

County Kentucky." The birthplace farm is

about three miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Nov. 8.  Owen Brown, John’s widowed father,

marries Sally Root.

1810

No census data available for the Browns in Ohio.

The census for Hardin County lists the family of

Thomas Lincoln as a male between 25 and 45

years of age with wife between 26 and 45,

boy (Abraham) under ten, and girl (Sarah) under ten.

1811

Spring.   Thomas Lincoln and family move from the

birthplace farm to a 230-acre farm on Knob Creek,

ten miles north and six miles east of Hodgenville.

1812

July.   War of 1812 begins.  Owen, John’s father,

provides beef and horses to U.S. soldiers on the

frontier.  Sometime between 1812-14, John has

traumatic experience, observing the abuse of

an enslaved/ indentured “negro boy” by a brutal

master. Owen Brown’s autobiography, ca. 1850, and

 John Brown’s autobiographical sketch, July-Aug. 1857

_____. A younger brother of Abraham, named

Thomas, is born this year and dies in infancy.

1815

_____. One academic year of instruction at

the Tallmadge Academy, Tallmadge, Ohio, under

the Rev. Simeon Woodruff.

Autumn.   For a few weeks in the fall of 1815 Abraham

and his sister Sarah attend a school taught

by Zachariah Riney. The following year the

school is taught by Caleb Hazel.

1816

Mar. 6.   John examined and admitted to

membership in the First Congregational Church

of Hudson, Ohio.

Summer.  John, his brother Salmon, and Orson

Oviatt travel to Canton, Conn., to study under

the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock.  They later transfer to

an academy at Plainfield, Conn., led by the

Rev. Moses Hallock. John and Salmon remain

until 1817.  John quits school due to chronic

eye inflammation and economic hardship. 

“Fire from the Midst of You”: A Religious Life of John

Brown, pp. 61-64

December.   During the first of this month

Thomas Lincoln moves his family from

Kentucky to what is now Spencer

County, Ind. (then Perry County).

1817

Oct. 15.   Thomas Lincoln goes to the

government land office at Vincennes

and enters the farm he has settled on.

1818

Oct. 5.   Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother

of Abraham, dies of milk sickness.

1819

Dec. 2.  Thomas Lincoln, father of

Abraham, marries Mrs. Sarah Bush

Johnston in Elizabethtown, Ky.

1820

Jun. 21.  John marries Dianthe Lusk (b. 1801)

in Hudson, Ohio.  Builds a cabin and operates

a tannery on Hind’s Hill Road in Hudson.

1821

Jul. 25.  John Brown Jr. is born in Hudson,

Ohio. (d. May 2, 1895) 

1823

Jan. 19.  Jason Brown is born in Hudson,

Ohio. (d. Dec. 24, 1912)

June 7.   Thomas Lincoln becomes member

of the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church.

1824

Nov. 4.  Owen Brown is born in Hudson,

Ohio. (d. Jan. 10, 1889)

1826

Spring?   John Brown relocates his family to

Randolph Township, Crawford County, in the

area of Meadville, Penn.  Establishes tannery

and partnership with Seth Thompson of

Hartford, Ohio.

1827

Jan. 9.  Frederick Brown (1) is born in Randolph

Township, Crawford County, Pa.  (d. Mar. 31, 1831)

1828

Jan. 20.   Lincoln's sister Sarah, who married

Aaron Grigsby on Aug. 2, 1826, dies in childbirth. 

During this year Abraham and Allen Gentry take

a flatboat loaded with cargo to New Orleans

for Allen's father James Gentry.

January.  John Brown appointed postmaster

of Randolph Township, Crawford County, Pa.

by the administration of Pres. John Quincy Adams. 

Randolph Township is later renamed Richmond

1829

Feb. 18.  Ruth Brown is born in Randolph Township,

Crawford County, Pa. (d. Jan. 18, 1904)

1830

Mar. 1.   Thomas Lincoln's family and the families

of his two stepsons-in-law start for Illinois.   

Abraham, one of the thirteen in the party,

drives one of the three wagons.

Mar 15.   The Lincoln family locates ten miles

southwest of Decatur, on the north bank

of the Sangamon River (now Lincoln

Trail Homestead State Park).

Jun. 12.  In a letter to his father, John Brown reveals

that he has had conflicts with certain Masons in

Meadville, Pa., due to his apostasy from the Lodge and

his anti-Masonic stance.  “I have discovered that my

movements are narrowly watched by some of the

worthy brotherhood.”

1831

March.   Lincoln, his cousin John Hanks, and

stepbrother John D. Johnston leave home.

At Springfield Denton Offutt hires them to

help build a flatboat at Sangamon Town,

seven miles northwest of Springfield.

April-July.   Lincoln pilots the flatboat to New

Orleans for Offutt and return to New Salem,

eighteen miles northwest of Springfield.

Aug. 1.   Lincoln casts his first vote at John

Carmon's house in New Salem,

the voting place of Clary's Grove

Precinct which includes New Salem.

September.   Lincoln begins clerking

 in Denton Offutt's new store at New Salem.

Dec. 31.  Frederick Brown (2) is born in Randolph

(Richmond) Township, Crawford County, Penn.

(d. Aug. 30, 1856, at Osawatomie, Kansas Territory)

1832

January.  John Brown establishes a

Congregational Church in Richmond Township,

Crawford County, Pa.       

Mar. 9.   Lincoln becomes a candidate for the

legislature on a platform favoring improvement of

navigation on the Sangamon River, changes in

the usury laws, and universal education.

Apr. 7.   Lincoln is elected a captain in

the 31st Regiment, Illinois Militia.

Apr. 21.   New Salem neighborhood volunteers

for the Black Hawk War form a

company and elect Lincoln captain.

May 27.   Captain Lincoln's company is

mustered out of service at Fort Johnson,

Ottawa. He then enlists in Capt. Elijah Iles'

regiment for twenty days.

June 16.   Lincoln re-enlists in Capt. Jacob M. Early's

independent spy company at Fort Wilbourn.

July 10.   The mustering-out roll of Capt. Early's

company, written by Lincoln, is certified by

Lt. Robert Anderson (who was to be

command at Fort Sumter in 1861).

Aug. 6.   Lincoln, a candidate for the first time,

is defeated in his bid for a seat in

Illinois legislature. He is eighth

in the field of thirteen candidates.

Aug. 10.  Dianthe Brown dies after bearing a son

on Aug 7.  The baby preceded her in death on

Aug. 9.  John is left with five children.

1833

January.  Brown appointed trustee for state

road maintenance, Crawford County, Pa.

Jan. 15.   Lincoln and William F. Berry purchase

from William Greene for $750 the store in

New Salem formerly owned by Reuben Radford.

May 7.   President Jackson appoints Lincoln

postmaster at New Salem. He serves

until May 30, 1836, when the office

is discontinued.

July 11.  John Brown marries Mary Ann Day (Apr. 15,

1816-Feb. 29, 1894), a local woman, in a house

wedding ceremony.

Oct. 26.  Brown informs his brother Frederick of the

death of their brother, Salmon Brown, a journalist

residing in New Orleans.

1834

Jan. 6.   Lincoln, as deputy surveyor of

Sangamon County, makes his first known

survey for Reason Shipley. He continues

surveying for three years.

Mar. 1.  In a letter to his relative and business partner,

Seth Thompson, Brown laments the scarcity of cash and

bemoans the closing of National Bank by Pres. Andrew

Jackson as “General Jackson darkness.”

May 11.  Sarah (1) Brown is born in Richmond

Township, Crawford County, Pa. (d. Sept. 23, 1843)

Aug. 4.   Lincoln, in his second try for public office,

is elected to the Illinois House of Representatives

as a representative for Sangamon County.

Sept. 30.   Lincoln surveys the town of New Boston

on the Mississippi River, now in Mercer County.

Dec. 1.   Lincoln takes his seat in the fifty-five-member

Illinois House of Representatives at Vandalia.

Nov. 21.  John Brown writes to his brother

Frederick (1807-77) about possibly establishing

a school for black youths and even purchasing a

 young black youth from slavery, “a favorite

theme of reflection for year.”

1835

May.  John Brown leaves Pennsylvania, relocating

his family to Franklin Mills [today, Kent], Ohio,

in order to pursue a tannery partnership with

Zenas Kent, as well as other entrepreneurial pursuits. 

______.  At some point in the year, perhaps

December, Brown purchases a 100-acre-plus farm

from Frederick Haymaker, in the area of Franklin

Mills, Ohio, with monies from other investors.  Sharing

the common anticipation that Franklin Mills is going to

expand rapidly, his intention is to profit from the

boom in Real Estate by parceling out and selling

the farmland at a profit.

Aug. 25.   Ann Rutledge, legendary sweetheart

of Lincoln, dies at the Rutledge farm

seven miles northwest of New Salem.

Oct. 7.  Watson Brown is born in Franklin Mills,

Ohio (d. Oct. 19, 1859 at Harper’s Ferry, Va.)

Dec. 7.   Lincoln is present for the opening of

a special session of Illinois legislature at Vandalia.

January 1859

One hundred fifty-eight years ago at this time, John Brown was moving about the Kansas territory, using Shubel Morgan as his nom de guerre, and following through on a liberation effort that he had undertaken just prior to Christmas 1858.  On the night of December 20-21, Brown and his men had formed into two parties with the intention of liberating a total of eleven enslaved people from three different Missouri farms.  As Brown later recalled at the conclusion of his trial in Virginia in November 1859, he had accomplished the Missouri liberation "without the snapping of a gun."1

The Snapping of a Gun

Of course, Brown was being subjective to a fault, since the other party of his men were not so fortunate in the Missouri raid.  In their case, when a slaveholder drew his gun to protect his "property," he was shot and killed.   Brown has been accused of deception in this matter, although Brian McGinty, a legal scholar and the leading authority on Brown's trial, characterizes the abolitionist's description in court as a misstatement, not a deceit.  Brown "was not lying," McGinty concludes, "for a lie is an intentionally false statement made for the purpose of deception and fraud. Brown's Charlestown speech was neither deceptive nor fraudulent, merely imperfect."2

While I agree with McGinty, I'd further suggest that Brown's alleged misstatement was also reflective of his tendency to err on the upside in any assessment.  As Boyd Stutler observed of Brown many years ago, I can also attest that invariably he tended to cast things in optimistic terms, even his criticisms of others.  John Brown was the proverbial "glass-half-full" kind of guy, so it is no surprise that he would see his Missouri raid as exemplary of diminished violence rather than as one where a slaveholder was killed.  After all, his overall point was that he was no insurrectionist in the conventional sense--he had not set about to kill slaveholders, either in Missouri or in Virginia.  He wished to liberate the enslaved, if possible, without wiping out slaveholders (as would be the case in a classic insurrectionary format), and certainly it was his wish to avoid "the snapping of a gun" when he went into Missouri in December 1858.  Indeed, it may be the case that had Brown led the other raiding party, the shooting might have been averted.  But he could not be in two places at once, and the lieutenant to whom he entrusted the second raiding party perhaps lacked the finesse that Brown demonstrated.

On December 21, Brown and his men escorted the liberated party out of Missouri, taking them about thirty-five miles over to Osawatomie, in the Kansas Territory a free state settlement nearby the Brown family claims.  Ultimately, Brown and his band escorted them across country to Canadian freedom, although the larger story of their trek will be reserved for another time on this blog.  On March 12, the liberated party  passed across the Detroit River into Canada at Windsor, Ontario.   Of more immediate interest, however, is the period of several weeks in December and January during which Brown, his men, and the liberated party had remained before finally departing from the Territory on January 20, 1859.  The delay was understandable and strategic.  Had Brown and his men attempted right away to escort the liberated black people out of the Territory, they might very well have been apprehended immediately.

The Controversy

Meanwhile, the outrage over the killing of a slaveholder by Brown's party was intense. To no surprise, the proslavery Missouri press shrieked loudly over the incident.  But some conservative free state people in the Territory also disdained Brown's Missouri invasion, some of them bitterly.   This was no more true than in the case of the contemptible G. W. Brown (no relative of the abolitionist), an opportunistic and cowardly editor who turned on John Brown with malicious intent (and continued to harangue the abolitionist vehemently throughout his final days in Virginia later that year).3 Biographers Oswald Villard and Stephen Oates both observed that free state opinion was actually divided over Brown's raid.4

The reason for this divided opinion seems to be that the free state element that criticized Brown's Missouri foray did so for reasons of realpolitik, since white free state settlers were far more concerned about their own immediate security than antislavery principles.  Of course, John Brown's intent in going to Kansas from the start was not to achieve peace in the Territory between proslavery and free state settlers, but to see the political conflict as an occasion against slavery.  According to Brown, it was his "deliberate Judgment since 1855 that the most ready & effectual way to relieve Kansas would be to meddle directly with the peculiar institution."5

Quite in contrast, many free state people were primarily concerned with avoiding retaliation from the proslavery side as a result of Brown's invasion of Missouri.  One irate settler named George Crawford told Brown off to his face, arguing that it was easy for him to strike a blow because he could leave the Territory.   It was the free state settlers, he continued, that would have to face the wrath of the proslavery side.  Brown responded to the effect that he was hardly comfortable in the circumstances, being away from home and risking his life for the sake of freedom.6  However, the real point was Brown's political priorities.  After all, it was his own family's security that had brought him to the Territory in the fall of 1855; yet for the Browns in Kansas, fighting the slave power was their family commitment. The same cannot be said for many of the free state people, who hated the "peculiar institution" but had not moved to Kansas to fight slavery, and who were both politically and psychologically unprepared to support black equality as a priority.

Yet, in all fairness to the free state side, Brown had more than pushed the envelope, and only the most radical abolitionists could cheer him on without reservation since he not only had had the audacity to invade Missouri in an armed foray, but also had run roughshod over every major federal law and ruling that protected the rights of slaveholders.  He had not only "stolen" "chattel" from slaveholders, but had the nerve to tax them in some measure of reparations.  Thus, Brown's men seized livestock, food, bedding, clothing, footwear, a wagon, and a shotgun from the three targeted Missouri slaveholders--what the Old Man called the "lawfully acquired earnings" of the enslaved.7 It is telling of the racial astigmatism that afflicted many free state people at the time, that they could not see the consistency of Brown's policy of seizing reparations for liberated black people, when surely they would have demanded the very same thing if their own interests were involved.   (Perhaps this failure of vision has continued in the more contemporary denial of any discussion about reparations for slavery and the subsequent theft of life and property that beset black people after the short-lived period of Reconstruction.)


A Wanted and an Unwanted Man

As far as the proslavery government in Washington D.C. was concerned, John Brown was a criminal that should have been brought to justice immediately.  President James Buchanan thus offered a reward of $250 for Brown's arrest, along with that of Capt. James Montgomery.  Montgomery was one of the leading "Jayhawkers"--militant free state opponents of the proslavery invasion in the Kansas Territory.  Montgomery's antislavery militancy became notable two years before, in 1857, when he formed a company of free state fighters to both resist and harass proslavery intruders in the Territory.  The newly appointed territorial governor, Samuel Medary, an Ohio Democrat, also issued a reward for Brown's capture, in the amount of $3000.8   After Brown had safely delivered the victims of slavery to Canadian freedom, a rumor spread that he had in turn issued a counter-reward for President Buchanan for $2.50.  It was not so, although the rumor had even caused the Old Man to chuckle in his own silent manner.9  Nor was he unaccustomed to rewards being placed on his head; the proslavery element had already offered a reward for $1000 for him in 1857.10   Still, Brown was not shy in his defiance. According to one source, when he spoke in Cleveland later in 1859, he declared that he "asked no favors of the General Government, nor of the Governor of Missouri, and expected none from either."  The report concluded that Brown avowed that he did not mean to be taken.11

Although wanted by authorities, John Brown was not necessarily wanted by free state settlers, who either resented his actions or blended personal admiration with disdain for his radical actions. General James Lane, the anti-abolitionist Democrat who somehow became one of the free state leaders, gratuitously sought authority from Governor Medary to arrest both Brown and Montgomery.12  It was a self-aggrandizing and shabby effort that fortunately was not taken seriously by the governor, although it showed Lane's true colors.  Lane also sent down another Democrat to speak to Brown in January in order to file a report with President Buchanan.13  Montgomery, William Hutchinson (the Kansan correspondent of the New York Times, and Brown's Ohio abolitionist friend, Augustus Wattles, all wished that Brown had never invaded Missouri.  Fearing a counter-attack, Montgomery endeavored some peace talks through Hutchinson.  In the words of Oswald Villard, Wattles "severely censured" Brown for his actions, to which Brown responded that he was through with Missouri and was now intent on "draw[ing] the scene of the excitement to some other part of the country."14
Of course, Brown was alluding to Virginia, where he hoped to do precisely the same thing as he had done in Missouri, only on a far grander scale, and with the hopes of a more far-reaching effect.

Departure and Documents

Brown left the Territory before the month of January had passed, armed to escort his black friends to Canadian freedom.  However, afterward he was definitive that he was not forced out of the Territory, either by friend or foe.  Writing to a journalist associate in Iowa in March, Brown made this point clear, apparently after reading a report by the New York Tribune that he had been virtually driven out by free state imperatives.  "The Tribune man was mistaken in supposing I was requested to leave Kansas," Brown wrote.  "No such request was ever made   I did not escape from Kansas but left solely to secure safety."15  The safety that Brown intended, no doubt, was that of the eleven people that he had liberated, including one who gave birth during the arduous sojourn.

James Montgomery (Kansapedia)

Two documents survive from the December 1858-January 1859 Kansas episode that should be included here.  The first is a brief letter from Brown to James Montgomery, dated January 2, 1859.  It is unsigned but clearly written in the pinched hand of John Brown:

               Turkey Creek, 2d, Jany, 1859.

Capt James Montgomery

                                        Dear Sir

                                                      The
Osawatomie men made a drive into Missouri
the other night; since which some of the settlers
& other friends have made a stand on the line to
prevent an invasion.  You are requested to
hold yourself in reddiness [sic] to call out rein-
-forcements at a moments notice

                Respectfully Your Friend


This document (held by the Kansas State Historical Society) conveys the sense of concern that had arisen following his "drive into Missouri," with free state men standing guard in the event of a counter-attack by Missourians.

Brown to Montgomery, 2 January 1859, Kansas State Historical Society Collection

 
More notably, before his departure, Brown penned a response to his critics, written in the very home of his esteemed friend Wattles, but vaguely dated as January 1859 at "Trading Post," to spare his host any further trouble.   In this epic rejoinder, Brown refers to the 1858 massacre of free state men by proslavery thugs, which resulted in neither arrest nor prosecution from either the territorial or federal government.   Then, explaining the circumstances by which he had intervened in liberating the enslaved people in Missouri, Brown demands a "comparison."

Eleven persons are forcibly restored to their natural & inalienable rights, with but one man Killed, & all "Hell is stirred from beneath." It is currently reported that the Governor of Missouri has made a requisition upon the Governor of Kansas for the delivery of all such as were concerned in the last named "dreadful outage."  The Marshal of Kansas is said to be collecting a possee [sic] of Missouri (not Kansas) men at West Point, in Missouri, a little town about ten miles distant, to "enforce the laws". All proslavery conservative Free State, doughfaced men & administration tools are filled with holy honor. 

Consider the two cases and the action of the Administration party 

Respectfully yours 

John Brown 

They hypocrisy of the federal government is made quite clear as Brown points out the fury that had been aroused by his actions, while nothing had been done about the killings of free state men.  The original copy of this document in Brown's hand is also held by the Kansas State Historical Society, but it is amply reproduced in texts.   Happily for Brown, too, the letter was published by a number of newspapers, beginning with Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, pictured below from the January 22, 1859 (p. 6) edition:

As Oswald Villard concluded, "Indubitably, the parallel was an effective one." As a result, his critics in the Kansas legislature were blunted, and Montgomery tried to wash his hands, writing to a local newspaper that he was not responsible for Brown's actions.  "Brown keeps his own counsels," Montgomery squeaked, "and acts on his own responsibility."   In February, while Brown was marching his liberated friends toward freedom, Montgomery surrendered himself to a judge in Lawrence.  For Brown, however, his successful Missouri raid's success had convinced him "of the telling effect upon the crumbling foundations of slavery of a similar undertaking on a larger scale."16
That undertaking would be his raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, at the end of the year.--LD

==============================

Notes

      1 "I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter [i.e. the Harper's Ferry raid], as I did last winter when I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side."  Statement of John Brown to the court, 2 Nov. 1859, Charlestown, Va., in John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown.  Edited by Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015), 105.

     2 Brian McGinty, John Brown's Trial (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 229.

     3 See my discussion about G. W. Brown's strenuous efforts in attacking John Brown after the Harper's Ferry raid in Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015), 203-07.

     4 Oswald G. Villard, John Brown: A Biography 1800-1859 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929), 370; Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (New York: Harper, 1970), 262.

     5 John Brown to John Teesdale, March 1859, in Villard, John Brown, 386.

     6 Oates, To Purge this Land With Blood, 263;

     7 Villard, John Brown, 386.

     8 Ibid., 371.

     9 Katherine Mayo's interview with Sarah Brown, Sept. 1908, in Box 6, Miss Sarah Brown folder, Oswald G. Villard-John Brown Papers, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Collection (OGV).

     10 S. L. Adair to "Dear Bro. & Sis Davis," from Osawatomie, Kansas Territory, 23 Oct. 1856, Transcript, in Box 1, OGV.

     11 Unidentified clippings from typewritten copies of newspaper articles from Cleveland, 1859, in JB in Cleveland, March 1859 folder, Box 4, OGV.

     12  Villard, John Brown, 370-71.

     13  Ibid., 374.

    14  Ibid., 375.  Villard draws Wattle's account from the Congressional Report on the Harper's Ferry Raid, popularly known as the Mason Report.

    15  Brown to Teesdale, in Villard, 386.

    16 Villard, 376-78.

Lyman Eppes Jr.'s Christmas Memory of John Brown

If you have read my first biography of Brown, "Fire from the Midst of You" (NYU Press, 2002), you are acquainted with the background of the abolitionist's determined move to the Adirondacks in 1849, when he and his family joined a fledgling black colony in Essex County.   The colonists were not ex-slaves as many have supposed, but rather free black residents of New York State, all of which were recipients of land grants from the wealthy abolitionist, Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, N.Y.  After the folding of Perkins & Brown, the wool commission operation that Brown had supervised in Springfield from 1846, he eagerly moved his family to the Adirondack town of North Elba, near present day Lake Placid, N.Y.

Brown loved mountain life, but his greater motivation was to assist the black land grantees in settlement.   Brown and his family lived in North Elba, on a rented farm, from 1849 until 1851.  Probably against his will, he was constrained to relocate back to Akron, Ohio, to manage the flock and farm of his business partner, Simon Perkins Jr.  Notwithstanding their failed wool commission operation, their partnership continued for several more years, until Brown could get free from Perkins and return to North Elba.  When they returned in 1855, they moved into their newly built farm house, where his family resided at the time of the Harper's Ferry raid in 1859, and where Brown, his sons Oliver and Watson, and a number of his raiders are interred.

With the move to North Elba in 1849, the Browns immediately became quite close to the black settlers since they already had been sending support, and since Brown had already become quite familiar to them as one of the leading white proponents of the experiment.  However, the relationship that the Browns formed with a family named Eppes (often spelled as Epps) was particularly warm.  Lyman Eppes Sr. was about thirty-three years old when he met John Brown (he was born sometime between 1813 and 1816), and moved to the "Timbuctoo" colony with his wife, Amelia (maybe Anna) and their young family, which ultimately grew to six children by 1856.  Eppes Sr. was a musician and teacher, as the late Ed Cotter once told me, "of rare ability."  He was also of mixed black and Native American descent (I am skeptical about references to him having been "full-blooded Indian," but I'm open to correction if anyone has better information.)  It was Eppes and his family that sang at John Brown's funeral in 1859, leading family and friends in Brown's favorite song, an 18th century hymn entitled, "Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow."

Lyman Eppes Jr. in later life

Of the six Eppes family members, the longest surviving sibling was Lyman Jr., who was born about 1848 (based upon the 1860 census), the year before the Browns' arrived in North Elba.1   Lyman Jr. lived well into the 20th century and perhaps was the last black settler in Essex County.  The black settlement itself was a failure, and most of the land grantees were already leaving the cold mountain settlement in Brown's time; only a small number remained in subsequent decades, and Lyman Jr. outlasted and outlived all of them.  In a letter written late in life, Lyman Jr. said that he never left North Elba because he could not bear to leave John Brown's grave.2

In December 1940, the Watertown [N.Y.] Times published a story based upon an interview with "'Lyme' Epps," on December 26 in Lake Placid.   In the interview a brief vignette is presented that I have seen nowhere else, pertaining to John Brown and Christmas.  "Among [the reminiscences], he relates how he sat on the knees of John Brown, the martyr of Harper's Ferry, and sang Christmas songs.  He was rewarded with candy for his efforts."3

Even assuming the reliability of his reminiscence, there is no certain way to determine the year of Lyman's Christmas memory of Brown.  My educated guess, however, is that this episode actually took place in between the first and second periods of the Browns' residence in North Elba.  Lyman Jr. would have been too young to sing Christmas carols on Brown's knee in 1849-51, so it is likely the story he recounts happened after 1851.  On the other hand, John Brown was not in North Elba for Christmas in 1855-58, when Lyman Jr. was older.  Of course, Brown was hanged before Christmas of 1859, so my assumption is that the incident took place during a visit to North Elba in the early 1850s, during the period when Brown had relocated to Akron, Ohio.

Detail of Joseph Pollia's statue of Brown and a black youth
 at the John Brown Farm in Lake Placid.  

If this is the case, then most likely it was during December 1852, when we can document that Brown was visiting North Elba from mid-to-late December.  It was during this visit that Brown spent Christmas with his married daughter, Ruth Brown Thompson and son-in-law, Henry Thompson in North Elba.  The couple had been married since the previous year, and Brown arrived in North Elba on December 14, 1852, on a mild Adirondack winter day.  In a letter to his son John Jr. in Ohio, the father thus wrote that "things appear to be progressing among our old neighbors," which is a direct reference to the black settlers, undoubtedly including the Eppes family.4 

When the statue of John Brown by Joseph Pollia was installed at the John Brown Farm on May 9, 1935, Lyman Eppes Jr. was still alive, and was even able to unveil the statue before an audience of 1500 people. It must have been quite a dramatic moment for the elderly man--to have remembered Brown in life, and now to finish his days under the shadow of a great bronze statue of the abolitionist. Perhaps the figure of the black youth standing next to Brown is, in part, an idealization of Lyman Eppes' life long devotion to John Brown.  Whether or not his story was a direct inspiration to Pollia as a sculptor is not clear.  But it is not hard to imagine what it must have meant to Lyman, especially in his final years.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!--LD

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1 The birth year of Lyman Eppes Jr. is not clear.  The 1860 census for Essex County lists him as twelve years old, which would mean he was born sometime between 1848-49.  But according to the Lake Placid News (14 Jun. 1940), his hundredth birthday was celebrated in 1940.  However, this is quite unlikely, and would have made him about nineteen at the time of Brown's death.  It is far more reasonable that he was actually in his early nineties when his hundredth birthday celebration took place.  Likwise, I am not certain of his death date, which seems to have been in the 1940s.

2 Lyman Eppes (Jr.) to O. G. Libby, 4 Aug. 1938 [TLS], courtesy of H. Scott Wolfe.

3 "Old Time Adirondack Christmas Recalled."  Watertown Times, 26 Dec. 1940.

4 John Brown to John Brown Jr., 15 Dec. 1852, in Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 105-06.

About John Brown: Remembrances by Frederick Douglass and Richard Hinton

"It must be admitted that Brown assumed tremendous responsibility in making war upon the peaceful people of Harper's Ferry, but it must be remembered also that in his eye a slave-holding. community could not be peaceable, but was, in the nature of the case, in one incessant state of war. To him such a community- was not more sacred than a band of robbers : it was the right of anyone to assault it by day or night. He saw no hope that slavery would ever be abolished by moral or political means: he knew,  he said, 'the proud and hard hearts of the slave-holders, and that they never would consent to give up their slaves, till they felt a big stick about their heads.'"  

Frederick Douglass, Storer College Address (1881)


“The purpose [of the Harper’s Ferry raid] was not that of insurrection, technically speaking, but to make slavery unsafe, by showing how it could be uptorn and disturbed through the efforts of a few resolute men.”

Richard Hinton, “About John Brown,” Hyde Park Herald, 18 April 1885.