John Brown: A Person on the Threshold, from the Farm to the Gallows

The old farm house, remnants of the tannery building, and the small cemetery remain on the isolated, rural country road. John Brown, who led the failed raid on federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry on October 16, 1859, is still remembered, in this small place called New Richmond.

The former John Brown farm, today the John Brown Museum, is located about 12 miles from the county seat at Meadville, Crawford County in northwestern Pennsylvania. The region, when Brown arrived to farm and tan hides, was then a semi-pioneer wilderness, dotted with small, almost frontier settlements in 1826. When John Brown arrived, the nation was at a threshold of history over the question of slavery..

Brown, who was born in Connecticut in 1800, spent more time at the New Richmond farm than at any other location during his lifetime. At the homestead, Brown suffered some deeply personal tragedies. He buried his first wife, Diange Lusk, on the farm not far from the house in 1832 following complications from childbirth. He married her in 1820, and together they had seven children; two children died in New Richmond, four year old Frederick and an unnamed infant son and are buried in the burial plot. (Note: The spelling, Diange, is unusual, however, according to the current owners of the museum, after talking with decedents of Lusk, the spelling is correct.)

Later, Brown also met and married, 17 year old Mary Day, who lived in Meadville and worked at the Brown tannery. Brown and Day had 13 children together. Some died in childhood, others remained with Brown and joined his militia in his later years. Day shared a final meal with Brown the day before he was hung in Charles Town on December 2, 1859.

Brown was not a hermit type farmer during his New Richmond days on the 200 acre farm. He was a community activists, a person on the threshold by today's standards. He was appointed the first postmaster for the region by President John Quincy Adams and held the position for seven years; Brown opened the first school in the area using the second floor of his farmhouse, and established one of the first places to worship at the farm. He was an accomplished surveyor and laid out many of the roads in the area.

Brown, during the time he spent in new Richmond, was actively involved in the anti-slavery movement. Although many of the actions of the Underground Railroad remained secret, because of the violent and tumultuous political climate, Brown appears to have been actively involved in helping to transport slaves from the then-frontier settlement of Meadville to freedom further north into Canada.

Brown, a deeply spiritual person, stood at another threshold in New Richmond when he expressed an interest in establishing a school for blacks and at the time wanted to adopt black children, although the dreams never materialized.

“If the young blacks of our country could once become enlightened, it would most assuredly operate on slavery like firing powder confined in rock, and all slaveholders know it well. Witness their heaven daring laws against teaching blacks. If once the Christians in the free States would set to work in earnest in teaching the blacks, the people of the slaveholding States would find themselves constitutionally driven to set about the work of emancipation immediately, “Brown wrote his brother Frederick in 1834.

Brown was forced to leave the Crawford County farm in 1836 because of poor finances and returned to Ohio, where he lived before moving to Pennsylvania farm. Brown's anti-slavery actions became more violent after the mob execution of abolitionist newspaperman Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois in 1837.

Lovejoy was adamant that a free press was one of the founding principles of the country. He continuously spoke out in editorials about the evils of slavery. In particular, he ignited public outrage because of his outspoken views, among which were those expressed against the mob action taken against Francis McIntosh, a free African American. McIntosh, accused of shooting a deputy sheriff was hunted down by an angry mob, staked, and burned alive in April, 1836 by a mob in St. Louis.

Brown, increasingly more and more prone to violence to overthrow pro-slavery forces, was deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, and finally made plans for raid on a federal facility at Harper's Ferry.

The 22 members of the assault raid were unsuccessful; Brown and his followers, those not killed in the assault, were captured and executed, including three sons. Brown was hung on December 2, 1859. He was buried in upstate New York near Lake Placid, in North Elba where he had bought another farm years earlier.

He was a popular hero to many and a home grown terrorist to others. The song John Browns Body soon became a popular and patriotic marching song for Union supporters as hostilities over the issue of slavery erupted in just over a year.

The Civil War song is still popular today at many events held at the farm in new Richmond which commemorate the life of John Brown. For many years, a Juneteenth Day or a John Brown Freedom Day picnic was always celebrate on the grounds. Juneteenth recalls the day, June 19^th, 1865, when the news was finally delivered to the last of the slaves in Texas that they had been freed two and a half years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation issued on January 1, 1863.

In some years, the celebrations were centered at the former Brown Farm, the final destination of the 12 mile walk along country roads from Meadville. Last year in 2008, the Juneteenth celebration was centered at Diamond Park in downtown Meadville surrounded by many historic buildings and churches which were used in the Underground Railroad operation.

The museum is open today and provides a glimpse into the life of a controversial American. There are tours and other public events held during the northern “good weather” months.

The John Brown Museum and tannery represent an often unknown and largely silent prelude to a bloody and controversial era in American history. On that rural road in New Richmond, in an isolated farmhouse, the forces of change were beginning to brew, as they were in other locations; and when they met and collided, the course of American and International history was forever changed and is still changing today. In some perspectives, John Brown remains one of the figures on the threshold, not a figure from the past.

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