Owen Brown (abolitionist, born 1824)

Owen Brown
Brown in 1882
Born	(1824-11-04)November 4, 1824 Hudson, Ohio, U.S.
Died	January 8, 1889(1889-01-08) (aged 64) Pasadena, California, U.S.
Resting place	A hilltop near Altadena, California, 34°13′3″N 118°9′37″W / 34.21750°N 118.16028°W / 34.21750; -118.16028
Known for	John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
Parent(s)	John Brown, Dianthe Lusk Brown
Relatives	Owen Brown (grandfather), brothers John Brown, Jr. and Jason, sister Annie Brown Adams; half-brother Watson, various other half-siblings

Owen Brown (November 4, 1824, Hudson, Ohio – January 8, 1889, Pasadena, California), was the third son of abolitionist John Brown. He was "to some extent a cripple from childhood by an injury of the right arm";^[1][2]:344 in 1862 he was described as "physically unfit for military service".^[3] He described himself as "an engineer on the Underground Railroad" and a "woodsman almost all my life", by which he meant not that he was a lumberjack, but that he was capable at hiking through woody terrain.^[2]:346 He never married. When asked later in life if he had been too busy to marry, his reply was: "Hardly; there are men who fix their affections on one, and losing that one remain single ever after."^[4]

He was much affected by the death of his mother, along with his newborn brother Frederick, when he was eight.

General comments[]

Of John Brown's six sons, he was said to be the one that most resembled his father physically;^[5][4] he was "exactly like the portraits of his father".^[6] He was described thus in the 1859 warrant for his arrest:

Owen Brown is thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, about six feet in height, with fair complexion, though somewhat freckled—has red hair, and very heavy whiskers of the same color. He is a spare man, with regular features, and has deep blue eyes.^[7]:549

He was also said to most resemble his father psychologically:

There was in Owen Brown, it is said[,] much of that excess of zeal, which is called sometimes eccentricity and sometimes fanaticism, and which was the characteristic of John Brown of Ossawatomie. Like his father, he was perfectly inflexible in carrying out what he had determined upon, and his courage was absolutely dauntless. He was renowned among his acquaintances for his passion for exact justice, and was honored by them for his sterling uprightness and integrity.^[8]

Another reporter said that Owen, of John Brown's sons, "is perhaps the greatest character of them all. Noticeably eccentric, with a strange mingling of gentleness and roughness, sentiment and course practicability [sic], which even his intimate friends cannot understand, with one of the warmest of hearts and the readiest hand, he leads a wandering kind of life, seeming to cut himself off from old friends and associations, and yet after a while returning to them, or letting them know by some kind message that they are not forgotten. He seems literally a man without a home, for realizing his restless disposition he has never married or formed any ties that could not easily be shaken off. He resembles his father in form and feature, and also—though in an exaggerated degree—his independence of the world's opinion."^[9]

Abolitionist activities[]

Kansas[]

Owen fought with his father in Kansas and was present at the sack of Lawrence. Border ruffians from Missouri burned his house and stole his cattle. He participated, along with brother-in-law Henry Thompson, in the Pottawatomie massacre.^[10]:18 "He was imprisoned, ill-treated, and finally driven from the State, for the sole reason that he was an abolitionist."^[11] In 1888 he recalled some of his Kansas activities.^[12]

Harpers Ferry[]

Owen, as he told it later, before the raid "spent many months in the mountains of the South, searching out suitable places for the rendezvous and concealment of liberty-seeking slaves". During the three months becore the raid, his father, under cover of prospecting for minerals, examined and approved of a number of them.^[13]

Owen participated in his father's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. He was guarding weapons at the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, and did not enter Harpers Ferry itself. When the raid failed he escaped capture and underwent what has been called "the most difficult and tedious flight that ever occurred in this country".^[13] After weeks of hiding and travelling at night, living on uncooked corn taken from fields and nearly starving, his shoes having given out,^[13] he arrived at Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where he had lived as a child (see John Brown (abolitionist)#Time in Pennsylvania). There he was fed and helped recuperate by a Quaker who remembered his father.^[13][14] Now near the Ohio border, he reached the safety of the home of his brother John Jr., at that time in Ashtabula County, Ohio, some 300 miles (480 km) from Harpers Ferry.^[2]

In early February Owen was indicted by a Virginia grand jury for "conspiring with slaves to create an insurrection".^[15] On March 8, 1860, the new governor of Virginia, John Letcher, announced a $500 reward (equivalent to $14,402 in 2020) for his apprehension and delivery to Virginia. The Attorney General of Ohio, Republican Christopher Wolcott, refused to honor Virginia's request for Owen's arrest.^{[7]:554–555} Owen remained in Ohio for many years.

Owen was the last surviving member of the raiding party; his older brothers John Jr. and Jason did not participate, and his full sister Annie Brown Adams outlived him, but was sent home from the Kennedy farm before the raid.

Put-in-Bay, Ohio[]

Owen was "not at all eager" to tell the story of his participation in his father's raid. A reporter had to make many visits to get him to tell the story of his difficult escape, which he said he had never told in 12 years.^[2]:344 At that time (1871) he and his older brother John Jr. were farming at Put-in-Bay, Ohio, Owen in a "one-roomed shanty", full of mementos, near his brother's house.^[2][16] He spent the winter months alone, except for a dog, as a hermit on neighboring Gibraltar Island, caretaker for the summer home of Ohio financier Jay Cooke.^[13][4][17] To pass time, he learned shorthand from books and copied the Bible in shorthand twice.^[13] He remained there until about 1885.^[13]

Pasadena, California[]

In the early 1880s—different sources give different years—Owen moved to Pasadena, California, joining his brother Jason, sister Ruth, a teacher, and her husband Henry Thompson, who were already there.^[19] They were seeking to escape "the increasingly negative broad popular memory of Brown." Pasadena, however, was sympathetic to the memory of John Brown; it was a Republican city, settled by immigrants from Indiana.^[10]:22 Owen, Jason, and to a lesser extent Ruth were considered to be "important figures", the men "eccentric and charming".^[10]:25

According to an obituary:

About five years ago [1884] Jason and Owen Brown took a homestead on a bench of mountain land five or six miles north of Pasadena, at the settlement now called Las Casitas. This they subsequently sold and took land higher up the mountain side, built a cabin, cleared and worked a few acres, and li[v]ed there—two feeble old men, alone. ...They were much visited by tourists and citizens, some from mere curiosity and others from a warm sympathy with the historic career of the family. They had made a good wagon trail up to their mountain hermitage, and were continuing it as a donkey path to the top of the mountain known as Brown's Peak, but it is not completed yet. Owen had a desire to be buried on the top of Brown's Peak; and if Jason ever succeeds in finishing the trail he will try to have his brother's grave up there as he desired.^[20]

Their mountain cabin was only a mile from the house of Ruth Brown Thompson, his sister, and her husband, in Pasadena.^[21]

Jason wrote, in an 1886 letter, "The people of Pasadena are eastern, mostly, and are very kind to us; they raised over $100, a short time ago without our knowing it, and gave it to us to buy a cow."^[22] When John Jr. visited them (see picture at right) they had to sell the cow to get money for John Jr.'s return east.^[23]

There, they were celebrated and supported, not for helping their father end slavery, but for a more contemporary movement, temperance.^[10] Owen became "one of the best known of Pasadena's early residents."^[19] The two "feeble old men", as an obituaey described them, were "much visited by tourists and the curious".^[24]:4 An as-yet unidentified photographer carried his equipment up the mountain on several occasions, and left us good pictures of both cabins, including the second one seen from above.

Temperance[]

Owen believed that what he called "the rum power" was a bigger evil than slavery, "and he gave himself to its destruction with the same devotion, and the same love that he gave to liberty".^[25] Celebrating the contemporary temperance campaign was a means to avoid dealing with their father's radical egalitarianism and recourse to violence.^[10]:30 Owen and Jason were honorary members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.^[26]

An obituary noted that he sent "fruit and sympathy" to the anarchists on trial in the Haymarket affair.^[27] At the time of his death Owen was living with his sister Ruth in addition to brother Jason.^[28]:53

Funeral and grave marker[]

Owen died of pneumonia January 8, 1889, at the home of his sister Ruth Brown Townsend, in Pasadena, California, at the age of 64.

January 10 was called by a newspaper "a historic day for Pasadena".^[20] His funeral, led by a Quaker,^[28] was the largest ever held in Pasadena; at least 1,800 people attended.^[11][25][29] The city trustees attended as a body, as did students from the Pasadena Academy.^[20] Six pallbearers, including John Hunt Painter, had known John Brown in Massachusetts, Iowa, or Kansas.^[28][20] A photographer was there. "John Brown's Body" was sung.^[24]:4

A marching band escorted the 2,000 mourners, nearly the entire population of Pasadena, in the funeral procession up to Little Roundtop Hill in West Altadena in the Meadows (

34°12′58″N 118°09′41″W / 34.216199°N 118.161381°W / 34.216199; -118.161381).^[30] Owen had asked to be buried on the hilltop near his cabin,^[19] in a spot called sublime, "on one of the highest peaks of the Sierra Madre mountains, commanding a view of the valley below for 60 miles (97 km), the sea and even the islands of the sea."^[31]

Grave marker[]

Ten years later, a marker was placed at the grave site.^[32][33] It read: "Owen Brown, Son of John Brown, the Liberator, died Jan. 9, 1889." Two iron ornaments, a heavy hook on the left, and a 6" diameter ring on the right, were attached to eyelets in the marker and could be moved—symbolizing freedom from the shackles of slavery and rapture from mortal bounds. 200 people attended the dedication.^[34]

The marker disappeared from the grave site in 2002, along with the concrete base and surrounding rail fencing, after the property on which it was located was sold.^[35] No legal action was taken, as the person or persons responsible have never been identified. In 2012, the missing gravestone was found a few hundred feet from the gravesite.^[36][37] In 2021, it was announced that the gravestone would be reinstalled.^[38]

In popular culture[]

He is the narrator, an old man living in California, in Russell Banks' novel about John Brown, Cloudsplitter.

Owen Brown is a supporting character in Ann Rinaldi’s novel Mine Eyes Have Seen. The book is from the perspective of Owen’s sister, Annie Brown.

Actor Jeffrey Hunter portrayed Owen in the 1955 film Seven Angry Men. The title refers to John Brown and his six grown sons, focusing mostly on the moral debate between Owen and his father.

He is portrayed by actor Beau Knapp in the 2020 Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by James McBride.

Archival material[]

Some letters of Brown are held at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland, Oregon.

See also[]

• John Brown's raiders

References[]

Further reading (most recent first)[]

• Thomas, Rick (June 7, 2018). "Brown Boys Were Local Heroes". .
• Ehrenreich, Ben (June 4, 2013). "Dead Reckoning. In search of Owen Brown, the antislavery abolitionist buried in the hills of Altadena". Los Angeles Magazine.
• Chapin, Lou V. (July 18, 1897). "'His Soul Is Marching On'. The Prologue to the Drama of the Civil War". Los Angeles Times. p. 17 – via newspapers.com.
• "Owen Brown — Some Facts about the Son of the Great Liberator [obituary]". Los Angeles Times. 16 Jan 1889. p. 1 – via newspapers.com.

External links[]

• John Brown's Family