USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 39
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39I
BIOGRAPHIES.
1. John Brown, commander-in-chief ; 2. John Henry Kagi, adjutant, and second in command; 3. Aaron C. Stevens, captain ; 4. Watson Brown, captain ; 5. Oliver Brown, captain ; 6. John E. Cook, captain ; 7. Charles Plummer Tidd, captain ; 8. William H. Leman, lieutenant ; 9. Albert Haz- lett, lieutenant ; 10. Owen Brown,* lieutenant ; 11. Jeremiah G. Anderson, lieutenant; 12. Edwin Coppoc, lieutenant ; 13. William Thompson, lieuten- ant ; 14. Dauphin Thompson, lieutenant ; 15. Shields Green ; 16. Danger- field Newby ; 17. John A. Copeland ; 18. Osborn P. Anderson ; 19. Lewis Leary ; 20. Stewart Taylor ; 21. Barclay Coppoc ;* 22. Francis Jackson Merriam ;* 23. John Anderson .*
It will at once be seen that this company was but the skeleton of an organization, which it was intended to fill up with recruits gath- ered from among the slaves and at the North; hence the great dis- proportion of officers to privates. According to the general orders issued by Brown, dated at Harper's Ferry, October 10, 1859, a week before his capture of the town, his forces were to be divided into battalions of four companies, which would contain, when full, seventy-two officers and men in each company, or two hundred and eighty-eight in the battalion. Provision was made for officering and arming the four companies of the first battalion, which, in the event of Brown's success, would have been filled up as quickly as possi- ble. Each company was to be divided into bands of seven men, under a corporal, and every two bands made a section of sixteen men, under a sergeant. Until the companies were filled up, the commissioned officers seem to have been intended to act as corporals and sergeants in these bands and sections, and they did so during the engagement at the village and the operations in Maryland and Vir- ginia.
Brown's first appearance in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, for the purpose of organizing his attack upon the place, was on the 30th of June, 1859, when he went down from Chambersburg in Penn- sylvania to Hagerstown in Maryland, accompanied by his lieutenant, Anderson. They spent the night at a tavern in Hagerstown, and there passed for Yankees going through the mountains to search for minerals. On the 3d of July Brown was at the Ferry with Ander- son, and his sons Watson and Oliver, and they spent that night at a tavern in Sandy Hook, a hamlet on the Maryland side of the Potomac, about a mile below. On the 4th of July they went up the river road towards the house of Mr. John C. Unseld, a Maryland slave- holder, who lived in Washington county about a mile from the Ferry on one of the mountain roads. Between eight and nine o'clock that
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HISTORY OF TORRINGTON.
morning, as Mr. Unseld was riding down to the Ferry, he met the party strolling along the edge of the mountain. Falling into conver- sation with them, in the country fashion, he learned that the old man was named Smith, that these were his sons, Watson and Oliver Smith, and that the shorter youth was named Anderson. "Well, gentlemen," said the Marylander, "I suppose you are out hunting minerals, gold and silver, perhaps." "No," said Brown, " we are out looking for land. We want to buy land; we have a little money, and want to make it go as far as we can. How much is land worth an acre hereabouts ?" Being told that it "ranged from fifteen dollars to thirty dollars in that neighborhood," he said, " That is high ; I thought I could buy for a dollar or two an acre. "No," said the Marylander, " not here ; if you expect to get land for that price, you'll have to go farther west, to Kansas, or some of those territories where there is congress land. Where are you from !" " The northern part of New York state." " What have you fol- lowed there ?" " Farming," said Brown ; but the frost had been so heavy of late years it had cut off their crops, they could not make anything there, so he had sold out, and thought they would come farther south and try it awhile.
Having thus satisfied a natural curiosity, Mr. Unseld rode on, and as we may suppose, took his morning dram among his Virginia acquaintances. Returning, some hours afterwards, he again met Mr. Smith and his young men not far from the same place. "I have been looking round your country up here," said he, "and it is a very fine country,- a pleasant place, a fine view. The land is much better than I expected to find it ; your crops are pretty good." As he said this he pointed to where the men had been cutting grain, some white men and some negroes at work in the fields, as the cus- tom is there. For in Washington county there were few slaves even then, and most of the field work was done by whites or free colored men.1 Brown then asked if any farm in the neighborhood was for sale. " Yes, there is a farm four miles up the road here, towards Boonsborough, owned by the heirs of Dr. Booth Kennedy ; you can
I In walking up the valley road to the Kennedy farm in May 1875, a distance of nearly five miles, I saw scarcely any negroes cultivating the farms, and but one colored woman who was working out-doors ; while I saw and talked with several white men plowing or planting their own land. It was not very different from this in 1859, for, out of 31,000 inhabitants of Washington county then, only 1435 were slaves, while 1677 were free col- ored persons.
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buy that." " Can I rent it ?" said Brown ; then turning to his com- panions he said, " I think we had better rent awhile, until we get better acquainted, so that they cannot take advantage of us in the pur- chase of land." To this they appeared to assent, and Mr. Unseld then said, " Perhaps you can rent the Kennedy farm ; I do not know about that, but it is for sale I know." Brown then turned to his sons and said, " Boys, as you are not very well, you had better go back and tell the landlord at Sandy Hook that Oliver and I shall not be there to dinner, but will go on up and see the Kennedy place ; however, you can do as you please." Watson Brown looked at An- derson and then said, " We will go with you." " Well," said the friendly Marylander, " if you will go on with me up to my house, I can then point you the road exactly." Arrived there he invited them to take dinner, for by this time it was nearly noon. They thanked him, but declined, nor would they accept an invitation to "drink some- thing." "Well," said Unseld, "if you must go on, just follow up this road along the foot of the mountain ; it is shady and pleasant, and you will come out at a church up here about three miles. Then you can see the Kennedy house by looking from that church right up the road that leads to Boonsborough, or you can go right across and get into the county road, and follow that up." Brown sat and talked with Unseld for a while, who asked him "what he expected to follow, up yonder at Kennedy's ? " adding that Brown " could not more than make a living there." "Well," said Brown, "my business has been buying up fat cattle and driving them on to the state of New York, and we expect to engage in that again." Three days later, the genial Unseld, again jogging to or from the Ferry, again met the gray-bearded rustic, who said, " Well, I think that place will suit me ; now just give me a description where I can find the widow Kennedy and the administrator," which Unseld did. A few days after, he once more met the new comer, and found Mr. Smith had rented the two houses on the Kennedy farm, the farm house, about theee hundred yards from the public road on the west side, where, as Unseld thought, " it makes a very pretty show for a small house," and " the cabin," which stood about as far from the road on the east side, " hidden by shrubbery in the summer season, pretty much."1 For the two houses, pasture for a cow and horse,
I It was at this cabin, since torn down, that Brown kept his boxes of rifles and pistols, after they reached him from Ohio. The pikes from Connecticut, a thousand in number, were stored in the loft or attic of the farm house, where Brown and his family lived.
50
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HISTORY OF TORRINGTON.
and firewood, from July till March, Brown paid thirty-five dollars, as he took pains to tell Unseld, showing him the receipt of the widow Kennedy.
How was it possible to doubt or mistrust a plain Yankee farmer and cattledrover who talked in that way, and had no concealments, no tricks, and no airs ? Evidently the Marylander did not once mis- trust him; though he rode up to the Kennedy farm nearly every week from the middle of July till the first of October. " I just went up to talk to the old man," said he to Senator Mason, when telling the story before the senate committee, "but sometimes, at the request of others, on business about selling him some horses or cows. He was in my yard frequently, perhaps four or five times. I would always ask him in, but he would never go in, and of course I would not go in his house. He often invited me in ; indeed, nearly every time I went there he asked me to go in, and remarked to me fre- quently, 'we have no chairs for you to sit on, but we have trunks and boxes.' I declined going in, but sat on my horse and chatted with him." Before the 20th of July he saw there " two females," who were Martha, the wife of Oliver Brown, and Anne, the eldest unmarried sister of Oliver, then a girl of not quite sixteen years. " Twice I went there," says Unseld, "and found none of the men, but the two ladies, and I sat there on my horse - there was a high porch on the house, and I could sit there and chat with them - and then I rode off and left them. They told me there were none of the men at home, but did not tell me where they were. One time I went there and inquired for them, and one of the females answered me, ' they are across there at the cabin ; you had better ride over and see them.' I replied it did not make any difference, and I would not bother them, and I rode back home."
I quote all this gossip because it pictures, as no description of mine could, the quiet and drowsiness of this woodland, primitive, easy- going, hard-living population, amid the hills and mountains of Mary- land, where John Brown spent the last three months of his free life, and gathered his forces for the battle in which he fell. It is a region of home-keeping, honest, dull country people ; and so completely did Brown make himself one of its denizens, that he was accepted as part and parcel of it, even when plotting his most audacious strokes. His wife did not visit him there, but his daughter and daughter-in law - a bride of the year before, a widow, a mother, and in her grave with her infant beside her when the next winter's snows were falling -
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BIOGRAPHIES.
made his cabin cheerful, and softened with feminine tenderness and tact the rough features of their rustic life. Osborn Ander- son, who spent the last three weeks before the attack at the Kennedy farm, has pictured the impression made upon him, one of the despised people of color, by the circle in which he found himself : " All the men concerned in the undertaking were on hand when I arrived, except Copeland, Leary, and Merriam ; and when all had collected, a more earnest, fearless, and determined company of men it would be difficult to get together. I saw evidence of strong and commanding intellect, high toned morality, and inflexibility of purpose in the men, and a profound and holy reverence for God, united to the most comprehensive, practical, systematic philanthropy and un- doubted bravery, in the patriarch leader. There was no milk and water sentimentality, no offensive contempt for the negro while working in his cause ; the pulsations of each and every heart beat in harmony for the suffering and pleading slave. Every morning when the noble old man was at home, he called the family around, read from his Bible, and offered to God most fervent and touching suppli-
cations for all flesh. ... ... I never heard John Brown pray, that he did not make strong appeals to God for the deliverance of the slave. This duty over, the men went to the loft [of the farm house], there to remain all the day long. ...... We were, while the ladies remained, often relieved of much of the dullness growing out of restraint, by their kindness. We were well supplied with grapes, paw-paws, chestnuts, and other small fruits, besides bouquets of fall flowers, through their thoughtful consideration."
Just before Brown expected to begin his campaign, he sent back to their mother in the Adirondac wilderness his daughter and daughter- in-law, under the escort of his son Oliver, who accompanied them as far north as New York. The father soon sent after them this touching and most characteristic letter, which he then thought might be the last he should write to his wife and family :
CHAMBERSBURG, PA., October 1, 1859.
DEAR WIFE AND CHILDREN ALL, I parted with Martha and Anne at Har- risburg, yesterday, in company with Oliver, on their way home. I trust, before this reaches you, the women will have arrived safe. I have encourage- ment of having fifty dollars or more sent you soon, to help you to get through the winter ; and I shall certainly do all in my power for you, and try to com- mend you always to the God of my fathers.
Perhaps you can keep your animals in good condition through the winter on potatoes mostly, much cheaper than on any other feed. I think that would certainly be the case if the crop is good, and is secured well and in time.
I sent along four pair blankets, with directions for Martha to have the first
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HISTORY OF TORRINGTON.
choice, and for Bell, Abbie, and Anne to cast lots for a choice in the three other pairs. My reason is that I think Martha fairly entitled to particular notice.I
To my other daughters I can only send my blessing just now. Anne, I want you, first of all, to become a sincere, humble, earnest, and consistent Christian ; and then acquire good and efficient business habits. Save this letter to remember your father by, Annie.
You must all send to John hereafter anything you want should get to us, and you may be sure we shall all be very anxious to learn everything about your welfare. Read the Tribune carefully. It may not always be certainly true, however. Begin early to take good care of all your animals, and pinch them at the close of the winter, if you must at all.
God Almighty bless and save you all ! Your affectionate husband and father.
Oliver Brown was not then twenty-one. His next older brother, Watson, was just twenty-four, and had been married for three years to Isabel Thompson, whose brothers, William and Dauphin Thomp- son, like her husband and brother-in-law, were killed at Harper's Ferry. In letters to his wife at various dates from September 3d to October 14th, Watson Brown wrote thus :
" I received your letter of September 14th, the night the girls got home, which I was very glad to get. Oh, Bell, I do want to see you and the little fellow [the young child born in the father's absence] very much, but I must wait. There was a slave near here whose wife was sold off south the other day, and he was found in Thomas Kennedy's orchard, dead, the next morning. Cannot come home so long as such things are done here. . . .
We are all eager for the work and confident of success. There was another murder committed near our place the other day, making in all five murders and one suicide within five miles of our place since we have lived there ; they were all slaves, too. . . . Give my regards to all the friends, and keep up good courage ; there is a better day a-coming. I can but commend you to yourself and your friends, if I should never see you again. Your affectionate husband. WATSON BROWN."
On Friday, October 14, Watson Brown, waited at Chambers- burg until it was late enough to escort the two latest recruits, John Copeland and Lewis Leary, from the Pennsylvania line, near Mid- dletown, through Maryland to the Kennedy farm, a work which must always be done by night, if the recruits were negroes. He reached the farm at daybreak on the 15th, bringing the two recruits and accompanied by Kagi. On the 16th he and his brothers, Oliver and Owen, received their orders from Captain Brown for the night
I Martha was the wife of Oliver, and was to be confined in March. Bell was the wife of Watson, and the sister of William and Dauphin Thompson ; Abbie was the wife of
.- ' Salmon Brown, who stayed at home with his mother.
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BIOGRAPHIES.
attack. Owen Brown, with Merriam and Barclay Coppoc, were to remain at the farm as a guard till morning, when, upon the arrival of horses and men from the Ferry, they were to move the arms by wagon-loads to an old school-house, now destroyed, about three miles from the Ferry, on the Maryland side. This place had been selected a few days before by Captain Brown, and it was in fact seized and held by Owen Brown during most of the 17th, while the fighting was going on across the Potomac. Watson Brown, with Stewart Taylor, was to hold the bridge across the Potomac, and Oliver Brown, with William Thompson, the bridge across the Shenandoah, a duty which they performed until the morning of the 17th, when the village of Harper's Ferry was fully in possession of Brown and his men. It was Watson Brown who stopped the train for Washington, on the Baltimore and Ohio rail road, not long after midnight on the 16th. Both Watson and Oliver were with their father early in the afternoon of the 17th, when he repulsed the sharp attack of the Virginia militia, after intrenching himself in the engine house, where he was captured on Tuesday morning, the 18th. Shortly before noon on Monday, Watson was sent out with a flag of truce, in company with Stevens and one of Brown's hostages, named Kitzmiller ; was fired upon and severely wounded, but re- turned to his father, while Stevens was captured.
Edwin Coppoc, writing to Captain Brown's wife from his cell in Charlestown a month afterward, said :
" I was with your sons when they fell. Oliver lived but a very few moments after he was shot [during the charge of Monday afternoon.] He spoke no word, but yielded calmly to his fate. Watson was shot at ten o'clock on Monday and died about three o'clock on Wednesday morning. He suffered much. Though mortally wounded at ten o'clock, yet at three o'clock Monday afternoon he fought bravely against the men who charged on us. When the enemy were repulsed, and the excitement of the charge was over, he began to sink rapidly. After we were taken prisoners he was placed in the guard-house with me. He complained of the hardness of the bench on which he was lying. I begged hard for a bed for him, or even a blanket, but could obtain none. I took off my coat and placed it under him, and held his head in my lap, in which position he died without a groan or struggle.""
I When in 1875 I visited Harper's Ferry, I found that it was not known there which of the bodies buried by the Shenandoah was that of Watson Brown, and which was Ander- son's. Oliver Brown was not buried at all, but thrust roughly, after death, into a barrel, and carried away to the medical college in Winchester. It is said that his body was there dissected and treated with insult. At any rate, an attempt made by their mother to obtain the bodies of her two sons, in December, 1859, for burial at North Elba, was unsuccessful. They have monuments at North Elba, near their father's but their bodies do not lie beside his.
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HISTORY OF TORRINGTON.
Before the attack on Harper's Ferry, one of Brown's captains, John E. Cook, of Connecticut, had visited the house of Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandson of George Washington, and learned where to put his hand upon the sword of Frederick the Great and the pistols of Lafayette, presented by them to General Washing- ton, and by him transmitted to his brother's descendants. With that instinctive sense of historical association which led Brown to make his first attack upon slavery in Virginia and amid the scenes of Washington's early life, this liberator of the slaves had determined to appear at their head wielding Washington's own sword, and fol- lowed by freedmen who had owed service in the Washington family. He therefore assigned to Stevens and to Cook, as their first duty after Harper's Ferry should be taken, to proceed to Colonel Wash- ington's plantation of Bellair, about four miles south of the Ferry, seize him, with his arms, set free his slaves, and bring him as a hostage to the captured town; and he even went so far as to direct that Osborn Anderson, a free black, should receive from Washing- ton the historical weapons. The order was executed to the let- ter, and before daybreak on Monday morning Colonel Washington was a prisoner in the hands of Brown," who belted on the sword of
I The interview between Brown and Colonel Washington. (who was one of the military staff of the governor of Virginia, and thence derived his title) is worth describing in the words of Washington himself. " We drove to the armory gate. The person on the front seat of the carriage said, " All's well,' and the reply came from the sentinel at the gate 'All's well.' Then the gates were opened, and I was driven in and was received by old Brown. He did not address me by name, but said, 'You will find a fire in here, sir ; it is rather cool this morning.' Afterwards he came and said, ' I presume you are Mr. Wash- ington. It is too dark to see to write at this time, but when it shall have cleared off a little and become lighter, if you have not pen and ink I will furnish them, and shall require you to write to some of your friends to send a stout, able-bodied negro. I think after a while, possibly I shall be able to release you, but only on condition of getting your friends to send in a negro man as a ransom. I shall be very attentive to you, sir, for I may get the worst of it in my first encounter, and if so, your life is worth as much as mine. My par- ticular reason for taking you first was that, as an aid to the governor of Virginia, I knew you would endeavor to perform your duty; and apart from that I wanted you particularly for the moral effect it would give our cause having one of your name as a prisoner.' I sup- posed at that time, from his actions, that his force was a large one; that he was very strong. Shortly after reaching the armory I found the sword of General Washington in old Brown's hand. He said, ' I will take especial care of it, and shall endeavor to return it to you after you are released.' Brown carried it is his hand all day Monday ; when the attacking party came on, Tuesday morning, he laid it on the fire engine, and after the rescue I got it." Colonel Washington survived the civil war, in which he took no part, but is now dead. His widow lives in Charlestown, and has sold this sword, with other mementos of Washington, to the state of New York.
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BIOGRAPHIES.
Washington and wore it from that time until his own capture, twenty- four hours after. When Virginia awoke on that October morning, the haughty commonwealth, mother of presidents and of slaves, be- held a gray-bearded old man, wearing the sword of Washington, standing amid the broken fetters of Virginia slaves, with a town of three thousand Virginians, white and black, at his mercy. At no time during the civil war, even when the national government was pouring soldiers into the South by hundreds of thousands and eman- cipating the slaves by millions, was there greater fear and commotion among the slaveholders than when they first learned of Brown's suc- cess at Harper's Ferry.
How simply and in what a plain country fashion Brown made his famous foray ought to be related ; since, like all he did, it was in keeping with his primitive and ideal character. At the Kennedy farm house, about eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, the 16th of October,- a cold and dark night, ending in rain,- Brown mus- tered his eighteen followers, saying, "Men, get on your arms ; we will proceed to the Ferry." His horse and wagon were brought to the door of the farm house, and some pikes, a sledge-hammer, and a crowbar were placed in the wagon. Brown "put on his old Kansas cap," I mounted the wagon, and said, "Come, boys !" at the same time driving his horse down the rude lane into the main road. His men followed him on foot, two and two, Charles Plummer Tidd, a Maine farmer who had joined him in Kansas, and John E. Cook taking the lead. At a proper time they were sent forward in ad- vance of the wagon to tear down the telegraph wires on the Mary- land side of the Potomac. The other couples walked at some distance apart, and in silence, making no display of arms. Now and then some of them rode beside Brown. When overtaken by any one, the rear couple were to detain the stranger until the party had passed on or concealed themselves, and the same order was given if they were met by any one. The road was unfrequented that night, and they passed down through the woods to the bridge across the Potomac without delay or adventure. Upon entering the covered bridge, they halted and fastened their cartridge-boxes, with forty rounds of ammunition, outside their coats, and brought their rifles into view.
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