The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1882-10-28
JOHN BROW Ms son WATSON.
His Burial at North Elba 23 Years At
ter his Death at inrpcr's Ferry.

NORTH ELIZA, n. ", Oct. I3-Of
all the strange and romantic incidents
In the career Of John Brown aud his
family; ono of the strangcst was the
burial yesterday, in this mountain
fastness, of that son of John Brown
whose body was taken by Virginia, i'll
1859, rs specimen in anatomy, and
has remained till now unburied. Wat
son Brown, with his older brother
Owen, and his youngest brother Oliver
accompanied John Brown to the Ken
neuy farm in Maryland in the sum-
mer of 1859, and marched down with
him toward Harpcr'S Ferry on the
! 10th of October, when he invaded Nir-
ginia with seventeen men, and cap
tured an important town, which he
held in his possession for day. Owen
Brown remained on the Maryland
shore to guard arms and supplies,
while Watson and Oliver went across
the Potomac into Virginia and cap
tured Harper's Ferry, under John
Browns lead. Both these sous re-
treated with their father into the en-
| gine house, where he was besieged and
! taken captive by Gen. Ice, who after
ward was himself besieged aud taken
captive by Gen. Grant. Oliver was
shot, and died before John Brown
surrendered; but Watson, though NOR
tally wounded before his fathers face,
fingered for 4 day, and died the morn
ing after the surrender. Perhaps it
was for this reason that the Virginians
took his dead body to their medical
college at Winchester, not far from
Harper's Ferry, and there prepared it
for anatomical use in the college-rc-
fusing to give it up for burial to his
mother, who asked for il. Two or
three years later, when Winchester
was occupied by the Union army in
the civil war, the surgeon of an ludi-
ana regiment heard the story of this
barbarity from the Virginia surgeon
who pcrpctrated it, and took the body
away with him to Indiana, where it
has remained unnoticed for twenty
years. When the surgeon heard, last
August, that the widow of John Brown
was yet living, and was travelling
from California to the Adirondack
Mountains to visit her husbands grave,
he felt some compunctions of con-
science, and wrote to her Offering to
give up the remains of her son for
burial. The poor mother accepted the
offer with joy, and after her son, John
Brown, Jr., had satisfied himself by
visit to Indiana that the body of his
brother was really there, he carried it
to Mrs. Brown at his home in Ohio,
and from there it was brought to this
J town for burial yesterday.
The grave of John Brown himself,
his funeral was celebrated with great
| honor in December, 1859. Watson
Brown came here with his father when
he was Il lad of II, grew up amid
these mountains, and married the
daughter of Il ncighboring farmer,
shortly before he went to die in Nir-
ginia. Three years earlier Gin 1860 he
had left North l.ba for while to join
his father and brothers in Kansas, but
| he returned here in 1857, and was till
| ing the hard acres of his mothers farm
! when his fathers summons called him
to Virginia. 1t was, thefore, with
| deep feeling that his former neighbors,
| the farmers and hunters Of the Adiron-
dack region, came to his strangely de-
layed funeral. They gathered at the
house Of his father, near which, beside
Il great rock, John Brown is buried,
and they lowered his coffin into
grave near his fathers, after religious
and c0Inmem orative services had been
performed on the green in front of the
cottage. The clergyman in attendance
was the Rev. Mr.. Pope of North IIlba,
who spoke in behalf of the people of
| n 0fth ItDa WIN muCn ie0iiHH ana
eloqucnce. Hymns were sung by the
Brown family and their former neigh
bors, and then John and Owen Brown
addressed the company. John Brown,
Jr., read q letter from South Caroli-
nian named Taylcrrc, who was with
Watson when he died, and who,
among other things, said:
i "Duty took me TO IIarpcr's Ferry at
the time of the raid in 1859 (1 was then
connected with the Baltimore prcss},
and by chance | was brought into
close personal contact with both your
father and your brother Watson after
the assault. / assisted your father to
, rise as he stumbled forward out OF the
, historic engine house, and l was able
!, to administer to your brother, just be-
fore he died, some physical comforts,
which won me his thanks. 1 gave
him 4 cup of water to qucnch his
= thirst and innprovised couch for him
l out of bench, with pair OF
G overalls for II pillow. AZ L re-
J.. member him, he looked singuarly
+ handsome, even through the CRIME of
c his alI-day struggles and the intense
5 suffering which he must have endured
I I'm, in o,,fI