USA > Ohio > The Western Reserve of Ohio and some of its pioneers, places and women's clubs, Vol. I > Part 5
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Eliza A. Parmelee.
A HISTORIC LETTER-THE CAREER OF JOHN BROWN
Interesting History of a Famous Man
John Brown's life is given in full in Editor Lane's "Fifty Years and Over of Akron and Summit County."
John Brown, son of Owen Brown, born in 1800, came with his father's family from Connecticut to Hudson, O., in 1805. He was designed for the ministry, but an affection of the eyes interfered with his theological studies, and he followed the call- ing of his father who was a tanner and farmer.
In 1820 he married Miss Diantha Lusk, of Hudson, who died in August, 1832, leaving seven children, six sons and one daugh- ter. He married the next year Miss Mary Day, of Crawford County, Pa., by whom he had seven sons and six daughters, thus being the father of twenty children, eight of whom survived the death of their father on December 2, 1859.
Besides being a farmer, he was a surveyor and a great lover of cattle and sheep. He could tell the country where the sheep were raised by their wool. To puzzle him he was given a soft tuft clipped from a snow white poodle, and when asked about it said: "Gentlemen, if you have any machinery that will work up dog's hair I advise you to use it upon this."
He removed to Richmond, Crawford County, Pa., in 1826, and there followed the tanning business for nine years.
In 1835 with Mr. Thompson he bought 200 acres near Kent for $7,000. It was platted as Brown & Thompson's addition to Franklin village. But the panic of 1837 occurring the scheme was abandoned. The only relic of it is "John Brown's house," a large two-story frame building on the southwest side of the river
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opposite the lower mill. It was erected for a boarding house.
In 1839 Mr. Brown took a drove of cattle to New England, bringing back a small flock of choice sheep, which was the nu- cleus of an immense business in that line.
In 1840, with Captain Heman Oviatt, a large land owner of Hudson and Richfield, he went quite extensively into the sheep and wool business, and removed to Richfield, where he also es- tablished a tannery.
In 1844 he stocked the farm of General Simon Perkins near Akron, with several thousand head of the very best fine wooled sheep.
In 1846 Perkins & Brown established an extensive wool de- pot in Springfield, Mass., not only for the sale of their own prod- ucts, but those of other fine wool growers in Ohio and other states, the object being to secure uniformity of price. Mr. Brown was placed in charge and removed to Springfield. Hav- ing a monopoly of the finest wools he put his prices too high for the manufacturers, and after holding his wool for two years he shipped 200,000 pounds to England. But there was no special demand for fine wool there, and after paying storage for some time, he sold it to the New England agents at prices that allowed them to reship and place it in their mills at several cents less per pound than they had offered before shipment. This involved the firm of Perkins & Brown in debt $30,000 to $40,000, and the firm dissolved.
In 1849 Gerritt Smith, having presented John Brown with a tract of wild land in what is known as the "North Woods or Adirondacks," he removed his family thither, and at North Elba for four or five years grubbed out from the rugged acres a com- fortable living. His older children, by his first wife, were in business for themselves.
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In 1854 Stephen A. Douglas advocated in Congress that the squatters on western lands should settle the matter for them- selves whether the state should be a slave or free state, and the friends of freedom formed Emigration Aid Societies, and thou- sands of intelligent and industrious men were sent to Kansas and supplied with means to establish homes, endow schools, churches, and form a local government. The slave states also poured in their surplus population.
John Brown's sons were among those who entered Kansas, and were determined to exercise their civil and political rights as squatter sovereigns. This subjected them to the most malig- nant hatred of the "border ruffian" element, and their crops were destroyed and their buildings burned. One of them was murdered and another driven insane by their cruel treatment when a prisoner.
These outrages led old John Brown to leave his Essex County home and fly to their rescue. By his coolness and brav- ery he was accorded the leadership in repulsing various attacks and in making raids on the camps and settlements of his enemies.
The skill with which he routed a large force of border ruf- fians, with a handful of men at Ossawatomie, gave him the name of Ossawatomie Brown.
The free state settlers outnumbered those of slave states two to one, and yet at elections the will of the majority was thwarted by incursions of armed bodies from Missouri.
In the height of this conflict John Brown visited Boston and was given $4,000 by the Emigrant Aid Society and twice that in war supplies. He stopped in Akron on his way back, and at a meeting told of the bloody struggle in Kansas, and the listeners not only gave their own rifles, powder, etc., but some stacks of
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arms stored in the jail. Two cases of fire-arms of a military company in Tallmadge also disappeared at the same time.
But this mode of warfare was entirely inadequate, to the mind of John Brown. It would never accomplish universal emancipation. He believed the slaves only needed a bold leader to rally en masse and fight their own way to freedom.
In 1858 he gathered a few friends at Chatham, Canada, and drew up a provisional constitution, with himself as commander- in-chief.
In 1859 he established his headquarters at the Kennedy farm, five miles from Harper's Ferry, Va., where one of the arsenals of the United States was located. He had retained some of the arms contributed for Kansas.
On Sunday, October 16, 1859, at 10 o'clock, with seventeen white men and five negroes, Brown took possession of the gov- ernment buildings, stopped railroad trains, captured a number of citizens, liberated some slaves and held the town for thirty- six hours. The whole southern country was very much excited.
On Monday the citizens of Harper's Ferry endeavored to expel the invaders, and one of Brown's men was shot down while conveying a flag of truce to the mayor.
One hundred militia arrived from Charleston, Va., and troops came from other towns, and by night there were 1,500 soldiers surrounding the engine house, but they were kept at bay by a handful of brave men entrenched there.
Monday night Colonel Robert E. Lee, afterward com- mander-in-chief of the Confederacy, arrived from Washington with United States troops, and Brown, refusing to surrender, fire was opened on the engine house. Brown and his men fought to the last, two of his sons were killed outright and two seri- ously wounded by sword and bayonet. Brown and his six sur-
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viving followers were taken to the Jefferson County jail, ten miles south of Harper's Ferry, and indicted for treason and murder.
Brown was so weak from his wounds that he was obliged to lie on a cot during the trial. He boldly proclaimed his hatred of slavery and prophesied its speedy overthrow.
He was executed Friday, December 2, 1859, at 11:15 a. m., and was cheerful to the last. His wife took the remains to North Elbe, where Wendell Phillips pronounced the eulogy over his remains.
Memorial services were held in many Northern cities, and in Akron the flags were at half-mast the day of his execution.
THE STORY OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
In the life and letters of Lyman Beecher, we have a de- tailed account of his controversy with Yale professors on the new doctrine of change of heart-the gift of the Holy Ghost. The discussion became so acute that the Unitarians, both oxtho- dox and regular, proposed, as new wine cannot be put into old bottles, it was best for Lyman Beecher to go West and found a school that would lead the bold and aggressive frontiersmen to adopt and carry out Beecher's views.
After much prayer and thought as to his abandoning this eastern field of discussion he consented to visit Cincinnati, the St. Clair station on the Ohio River. He returned to say it was an opening to the great northwest and held wonderful possi- bilities. He would go and take his family with him. Arthur Tappen, a dry goods merchant of New York, gave him thirty thousand dollars, but in a year or two the students numbered one hundred and it was necessary for Lyman Beecher to go East to solicit more funds. The slavery question was being agitated everywhere and the students at Cincinnati were called to listen to nine consecutive lectures of two hours each by Theodore D. Weld. He had married Angeline Grimke, who had written "An Appeal to the Women of the South," and Elizur Wright, secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, once of Tallmadge, and afterward editor of an anti-slavery paper in Boston, read it and invited the Grimke family, consisting of Sarah, Angeline and a brother, to visit New York. Here they talked at numerous meetings and Wendell Phillips stepped in to hear them and stood spellbound and declared from this time he was an Abolitionist. In Elyria, O., Mr. Philo P. Stuart was a
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member of the family of Rev. John J. Shipherd. Mr. Stewart had been a missionary among the Cherokee Indians and they consulted together about a college that would teach men and women of all races, equally, and concluded "to go to New York by way" of Cincinnati. Here they met Theodore D. Weld and heard his talk on "Slavery as It Is," and when he had convinced three of the Lane Seminary teachers to go to northern Ohio and open a school for all races without regard to sex he joined them in their visit to New York City to ask the great evangelist of Broadway Tabernacle, Charles G. Finney to go to this school in northern Ohio and by his sermons and popularity win for it a place in the world. Mr. Finney had the Tabernacle, which could seat three thousand, so built as to be audible from all speakers on the platform, and he said to Mr. Shipherd, "When you are ready for me I will go." Hughes & Co., a business firm who owned the township of Russia, Lorain Co., Ohio, offered them 3,000 acres if they would sell 1,000 at one fifty an acre. Another account says they gave them five hundred acres and the other acres at one fifty per acre and Mr. Shipherd was to sell it at two fifty an acre and thus secure a fund for the establishment of the college.
Their next business was to locate the acres given to them They wandered through forests, full of swamps or underbrush on small knolls, and when very discouraged saw a bear under a tree and took it as an omen and at once made that tree the center of their gift of acres.
Peter P. Pease was the first to purchase and he put his cabin at this place, the southeast corner of Tappan Hall Square. Col. Arthur Tappan gave them twenty thousand dollars, ten thousand of which was put into Tappan Hall, the largest of the first five college buildings.
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February 2, 1834, a charter was conferred by the Legisla- ture to Oberlin Collegiate Institute. "It was to be a school for both sexes and its object was to diffuse pure religion, sound morality and useful science among the growing multitudes of the Mississippi Valley, and the school was to be surrounded by a Christian community."
They named it after John Frederick Oberlin, of Walbach, Alsace-Lorraine (see account in another place). February 10, 1838, they admitted James Bendly, a colored man from Cin- cinnati. The vote was carried by just one majority.
July 5 to 8, 1835, three came from Cincinnati, President Asa Mahan from the First Presbyterian Church, Rev. John Morgan, Professor of Biblical Literature, and Rev. James A. Thome, of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. President Mahan was the author of several books. He remained until 1850, and died in England in 1889.
Prof. Morgan died in 1884, having been fifty years a teacher in Oberlin Seminary. Prof. Thome died in Chatta- nooga, Tenn., in 1893.
The Ladies' Literary Society was formed July 11, 1839. The Young Men's Lyceum in 1839. In 1840 a report of the labors of young men's work is $319.40, for their vacation teach- ing is $408.32; young women in labor and teaching $1,540.57, a total of $2,268.29.
In 1839 was the first issue of the Oberlin Evangelist of 5,000 copies. The first term of the fall of 1833 classes were formed. In the spring of 1834 the college course was installed and Henry and James Fairchild constituted one-half of the class, when they graduated in 1838 they had a prominent part in the exercises. Forty-four graduated, twenty-nine men and fifteen women.
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In 1835 there came many theological students from the Western Reserve, of Hudson, O., and from Lane Seminary, of Cincinnati, O.
The first church was completed in 1844. It was the largest building west of the Alleghenies. It cost $12,000. The archi- tecture was like Broadway Tabernacle, suggested by Rev. Fin- ney. The church has never been formally dedicated. The first preacher, Rev. John J. Shepherd, the second, Charles G. Finney. In 1860 the membership was over 1,500 and the second church was built. The choir of 170 voices was led by Prof. Geo. N. Allen,
Music Hall was built in 1842, through the efforts of Prof. George N. Allen, the literary societies and the choir of the first church. It was destroyed by fire in 1880. But it served a purpose by having a telescope for the students. Well does the writer remember looking at the planets and at the moon, and she said to Prof. Fairchild to go to these places I would deny myself and take up my cross and follow Jesus. This moved her heart more than any sermon and he said, "We will visit the moon together some time and see what those dark spots mean." She has ever since advocated a telescope at prayer meetings to make real the immortal life. One winter Tutor Penfield taught school in the Music Hall and we had Saturday forenoon for spelling. Two chose sides and many never got to the head. Three or four were sure to reach it, and those from the bottom of the class would soon regain it, but it was the purest kind of fun and it helped to make us study the spelling book.
The Chemical Laboratory was built in 1838. Dr. James Dascomb gave lectures and we recited from notes taken in the recitation rooms. He called the writer back after recitation
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because of inattention and the class said, "You will get a scolding," but he seemed pleased that she wanted to look at specimens of anatomy and explained them fully. It was enough to make her behave better. Years later Mrs. Dascomb invited her to her home when on a visit to Oberlin and gave many incidents of students. She had secured her a place in a family to teach in Alton, Ill., and there was much to tell about their visit to Governor Bissell's ball in 1887, and why Mrs. President Lincoln was anxious to have her table in Washington such as the Springfield, Ill., people would admire.
The (first) Ladies' Hall was built in 1835, 38 by 80 feet. Here the assembly room was used for writing classes by Mr. McArthur and Monday exercises by the principal, Miss Mary Ann Adams, where we were told the reasons for neatness in dress, gave an account of failure in rising or at breakfast and morning prayers, church attendance once on Sabbath and at the Thursday lecture. Here also were the calisthenic classes, that Miss Holly helped to guide for she had been taught dancing. We all loved Miss Adams, so kind in manner, and although she had a studied politeness she was a genuine friend to every in- dividual girl in the institution.
Oberlin Hall was built in 1835, nearly opposite the historic elm. Here the writer recited in Latin to Tutor Nelson Hodge, who would play upon the name, saying to Sarah C. Platt, the best scholar in the class (an old teacher) "Now give a free interpretation, a whole platoon," and to Mr. Dresser, "Dress it up well," and to another, "How is your Mattie matics today?" The front room was used for reciting in the general history class, taught by Prof. Edward Henry Fairchild, and was a picture story from first to last. He afterward went to Berea, Ky., as its college president.
JAMES H. FAIRCHILD, PRESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
President James H. Fairchild of Oberlin College, had a most remarkable life and was a friend of all students.
We take great pleasure in giving some of the facts stated by Jason Pierce in Oberlin Alumni Magazine, April, 1912, also from his autobiography.
James was one of ten children of Grandison and Mary Harris Fairchild, born November 25, 1817, in Stockbridge, Mass.
Of the four sons, one became a farmer and three college presidents. Of the four girls, one married a farmer, one was the wife of the president of Olivet College, Michigan. Two children died in infancy.
James was the third child, and when a year old the family removed to Brownhelm, O., and were sheltered until their log house was built by a Mr. Avery, the founder of Female College in Pittsburgh, open to colored people. There were no roads and no fields for planting crops until the stumps had been rooted out. The people had to provide their own food and clothing. The children went barefoot-sometimes through the snow. When James was given money to attend a circus he bought a pocket- handkerchief with it, for he needed it more. When he was twelve there was a classical school established in Brownhelm; this was in 1829. In 1832 another was established in Elyria. Henry and James went to it, but James was so hungry he walked home after two weeks. His mother filled a basket with food, on his return, but he only stayed one week, then his father found them another boarding place; they both remained until ready to enter Western Reserve College at Hudson. In Oberlin
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students could earn their board and tuition, so James and Henry went to Oberlin as soon as the first instruction was given. They were one-half of the freshman class, but before it graduated in 1838 there were twenty-eight in the class. They were given places on its programme to speak of its advantages. Roads had to be made, buildings erected and trees removed. James and Henry were given the charge of a lathe mill and worked five hours daily at five cents an hour. This, with what they earned in vacation, paid their way through college. When they graduated the students numbered 400. Then they studied three years in the Theological Seminary and graduated in 1841. James had paid his way, teaching the languages, which he greatly enjoyed, but when Timothy B. Hudson chose the lan- guages, James accepted the chair of mathematics. When he went into the pulpit he found he had to read his sermons and he did not believe in that practice, so gave his life to teaching, twelve hours a day at four dollars a week. He taught math- ematics for twelve years. He became associated with President Finney in 1869 as chairman of administration work, which the President would not accept.
When asked why he took long walks with Professor John Morgan, his reply was, "The salaries are not very large in Oberlin and the companionship is more than half the pay." When his salary was $500 a year he gave $100 back to the college.
Because of his gentleness he was called upon to settle many vexing problems. His concept of sin was, "failure to choose the best."
There is not a building today that served the college in 1866. French Hall, Society Hall and Spear Laboratory, Stuart, Counsel, and Peters' Hall, Warner and Talcott Hall, Baldwin
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Cottage and Sturges Hall were all built during his term of office.
One element of his success was the men of ability that he called to his assistance. Professors Wright, Courrier, Jowett, Hall, Root, Bosworth, Martin, Peck, Anderegg, Wattles, Car- ter, Morrison, Kimball, Andrews, and also John M. Ellis, his great friend. There were also Mrs. A. A. F. Johnson, Mrs. and Mr. Rice, A. A. Wright, W. B. Balentine, and W. G. Frost, of Berea College of Kentucky.
There were 1,100 students in 1866, and at the end of his term 1,700 in 1889, when he resigned in his eighty-first year. The long vacation of winter had changed to a summer vacation. The elective system had been introduced, also alumni as trustees. He welcomed great men of advanced ideas on reform and of music. Lowell Mason, I. B. Woodbury, W. B. Bradbury, each held one week of "Institutes in Music." Lowell Mason, with his white hair and piercing blue eyes, gave us many suggestions in regard to singing as we sang out of one of his own books. Bayard Taylor inspired us with a desire for travel, as he gave an account of his first interview with Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune, who said to him, "If your letters are inter- esting and instructive they shall be published." Frederick Douglass depicted the sorrows of the colored people, who have like ambitions with ourselves, but are deprived of wife and chil- dren and the means of education. Oberlin was the first college to admit them.
Prest. Fairchild married Mary Fletcher Kellogg, a student whose family had removed from Jamestown, N. Y., to Louisiana. He wrote Mary letters, and in paying the postage of one he received from her, gave the postmaster his purse as a guar- antee that he would soon give him the required 25 cents. His visit to her preceding the war was full of thrilling incidents.
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President Fairchild knew he was led by God and said, "If a blank had been given me at the outset to fill with a programme of my life, as far as personal advantages, the satisfaction of home and friends, I could not have done as well." Because he did his best God mightily used him. His visit to the home of Oberlin, after whom the college is named, is another instance of his perseverance.
A VISIT TO WALBACH, THE HOME OF PASTOR OBERLIN
In July, 1871, my friend and I arrived at Strasburg. We asked the direction to Walbach. No one knew the existence of such a place; we bought a German military map. We were to take the railroad to Metzig, then a carriage sixteen miles up the valley to Schirmeck, through several villages and hamlets. Instead of milestones they had shrines, a life size of the Savior, made in the red sandstone of this region. These answered in the place of chapels for worship. They are thought to protect from blight and pestilence. The seven miles from Schirmeck we made on foot. This road was built by Oberlin and his church many years ago. Before that there was no connecting link with the outside world. He talked about it for years. One day he went out, alone, with his pick and commenced upon a rock. The next morning the parish clerk assisted him and soon all the people were enlisted. In two years they had made this road of seven miles, which is good until this day.
The Parsonage is the only hotel in Waldbeck and this house was built by Oberlin himself. Pastor Witz is the son of the daughter of Oberlin, and there are other grandchildren living. He is about 65 years of age and preaches in the church occupied by his grandfather. The wife and daughter and Pastor Witz completed the family.
They spoke both French and German. Dr. Witz, having a university education, could speak Latin.
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They apologized for having no meat or butter, yet there was no lack of wine. We could thus see the estimate placed on the necessaries of life. They were living comfortably and per- haps elegantly. There was a cabinet of twenty drawers to receive contributions from school children for various benevo- lent purposes. We gathered cherries from a tree he planted. The church, forty-five by thirty, is near, and is made of stone, and it has a gallery on three sides. The lower part had just been refurnished with seats of modern style. In the gallery the seats were hewed spruce timber, eight inches square, raised a little above the floor. The pulpit stands against the wall, oppo- site a tablet saying: "J. H. Oberlin, Pastor of the Parish fifty years. Born 1740, died 1826. This is to his beloved memory."
The grave of Oberlin is at Foulday, two miles distant. The streets of Walbach are untidy; they dress in cotton cloth, mostly blue and wear wooden shoes. Their business is cotton-weaving. Thirty yards of twilled tape is woven at once on a single loom. Their transfer to Germany has interfered with their business. They could not speak of it with patience.
After a walk of seventeen miles through the forest we reached Barr, a railroad station, twenty miles from Strasburg.
Rev. Charles G. Finney, President of Oberlin College
PRESIDENT CHARLES G. FINNEY
FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHAS. G. FINNEY
(By permission of Barnes & Co., New York)
This noted evangelist was born in Warren, Litchfield county, Conn., April 2, 1792. When he was two years old the family removed to Oneida county, New York, a wilderness to a great extent, but settled mostly by New Englanders, who established schools and had the gospel preached. Later the family moved two miles south of Sacketts Harbor. Charles attended school summer and winter and when sixteen taught in the neighbor- hood. At twenty he visited Connecticut. He taught school in New Jersey and New York.
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