Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-07-29

This is the language of that repressed and simple
Puritanism in which these Mayfower descendants
always lived. Your own mother" was Dianthe
Lusk, who for years before her death had been
insane, and from whom this son, John Brown, IT,
may have inherited his occasional insanity. John
Brown himself was never insane but had the most
perfect control of his own mind from first to last
Unlike his father Owen, worldly prosperity was
not to be the lot of the Kansas hero. He engaged
from time to time in several occupations, and was
sometimes almost wealthy; but at the final settle
ment OF each business he was left poor, and some
times in debt. His wool merchandising which about
I84o brought him from Ohio to Massachusetts,
where he lived in Springfield for a few years, began
to suffer reverses in I84o.. To counterfeit them
Brown determined to visit Europe and make a
market there for the large stock of good wool which
his firm, Perkins & Brown, had accumulated while
the American market falling. He sailed from
Boston in the Cunarder Cambria August ~
Brown went through Belgium, a part of Germany
and Switzerland and then down into Northern
Italy On the Continent he began inspect battle
fields, beginning with Waterloo His comments on
the Austrian and French troops. whom he saw at
reviews, were much to the point The German farms
he thought suffered from the custom of the 1aborers
to live in villages and not on the farm itself Bv
this time he had made himself good farmer and
stock breeder and was an admirable Judge and
sorter of wool. But he had luck with his ship
ment of American wool to Europe, and soon after
his return in October his firm became involved in
long laWSuuCS ana fa1Ied. HIS partner, Colonel
Simon Perkins of Akron, when l saw him in S75
spoke shghtingly of Browns business capabilities
Organized Negroes Resist Recapture
IN Springfield Brown had associated much with
the colored families there, many of them being
fugitive slaves. These he organized into band to
resist recapture Before going abroad he had bought
land of Gerrit Smith in North Elba, among the
Adirondack woods and took charge there soon after
his return, of small colony of Negroes who had
settled on land given them by Smith. There as
well as in Springfield, he sought colored recruits
for his proposed invasion of the slave territory
plan formed by Brown early as 1898.
Brown established himself in plain house in the
town of North Elba, and gave employment to some
OF the few coored persons who accepted the gift of
Smith but found no colored recruits there He did
find family of New Hampshire yeomen in those
woods, clearing land, which they had bought of
Smith on long credit, and from these Thompsons he
had chosen Henry for the husband of his eldest
daughter Ruth and his soldier in Kansas; while two
younger brothers, William and Dauphin Thompson
followed him to Harpers Ferry, and were slain there.
OF another brother, Samuel, purchased from him
self and his brother, in August, 1887, hundred
and sixty of partially cleared land, to increase
the farms of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Ruth Thompson;
to put them in possession of the menas of support
ing themselves, as the subscription paper drawn
up by Amos Lawrence father of Bishop Lawrence,