Owen Brown (November 4, 1824 – January 8, 1889) was the third son of abolitionist John Brown. He participated more in his father's anti-slavery activities than did any of his siblings. He was the only son to participate both in the Bleeding Kansas activities—specifically the Pottawatomie massacre, during which he killed a man Letter is located in the Boyd Stutler Collection, West Virginia Archives and History.—and his father's raid on Harpers Ferry. He was the only son of Brown present in Tabor, Iowa, when Brown's recruits were trained and drilled. He was also the son who joined his father in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, when the raid was planned; he was chosen as treasurer of the organization of which his father was made president.
Personal information Owen was named for his grandfather, a prosperous Connecticut tanner, strong abolitionist, and one of the first settlers in Hudson, Ohio.
He described himself as "an engineer on the Underground Railroad" and a "woodsman almost all my life". By this he meant not that he was a lumberjack, but that he could hike through woody terrain—a skill that later saved his life, escaping from the Harper's Ferry debacle. ("[S]o strong is the woodsman in him, that he gave me not only the direction and probable extent of every mountain and valley he passed, night or day, but the nature and quality of the timber almost everywhere in his way.") He never married, and referred to his one-room cabin in Ohio as "bachelor hall". When asked later in life if he had been too busy to marry, his reply was: "Hardly; there are men who fix their affections on one, and losing that one remain single ever after." According to a writer who felt that Owen "seems to have been a bachelor from principle", he "went so far as to divulge the fact that there was one maiden near Springdale [Iowa] whom he would marry, if he ever married at all, but to whom, out of abundant caution, he had resolved never even to speak."
He was much affected by the death of his mother, along with his newborn brother Frederick, when he was eight.
His burial site, atop a hill near Altadena, California, has become a minor tourist destination, reached via a public hiking trail. In 2024 the site was designated a Los Angeles County historical landmark.
Resemblance to his father Physically Of John Brown's six adult sons, he was said to be the one that most resembled his father physically; he was "exactly like the portraits of his father", "he bore the likeness of his father more perfectly than either of his brothers [Jason and John Jr.], and in many characteristics was like him." He was described thus in the 1859 warrant for his arrest:
Owen's arm injury According to his father, "Owen [was] to some extent a cripple from childhood by an injury of the right arm". In his will, his father referred to Owen's "terrible suffering in Kansas and crippled condition from his childhood". He "had been badly injured after the campaign of June, and afterward very ill in Iowa, whither he had gone to regain his health. John referred repeatedly to "our crippled and destitute unmarried son". He wrote Lydia Maria Child: "I have a middle-aged son [Owen was 35], who has been in some degree a cripple from his childhood, who would have as much as he could well do to earn a living. He was a most dreadful sufferer in Kansas, and lost all he had laid up. He has not enough to clothe himself for the winter comfortably. I have no living son or son-in-law who did not suffer terribly in Kansas."
The nature of the injury is something Owen did not talk about. Brown biographer Richard Hinton only had vague information: "he had been physically unfortunate, when younger, in the injury of an arm or shoulder, I think, through which he had suffered so severely as to prematurely age him, and produced a trouble of some kind by which he was subject to drowsiness. This, as well as being crippled in his arm, rendered him incapable of any very hard labor." One source says the injury was the result of "throwing a stone when a boy"; another, that Owen was "seriously crippled in his Kansas campaigns, and unfit for service in the Union army in consequence".
Psychologically He was also said to most resemble his father psychologically:
Another reporter said that Owen, of John Brown's sons, "is perhaps the greatest character of them all. Noticeably eccentric, with a strange mingling of gentleness and roughness, sentiment and course practicability , which even his intimate friends cannot understand, with one of the warmest of hearts and the readiest hand, he leads a wandering kind of life, seeming to cut himself off from old friends and associations, and yet after a while returning to them, or letting them know by some kind message that they are not forgotten. He seems literally a man without a home, for realizing his restless disposition he has never married or formed any ties that could not easily be shaken off. He resembles his father in form and feature, and also—though in an exaggerated degree—his independence of the world's opinion."
Comments on his personality He was "a man of eccentrlc character, humorous and kindly, and endowed with one of those wonderful memories in which every past scene and event seems preserved exactly as it befell, no matter how long the intervening time. His narration of his adventures was minute to the least point. ...The friendliest of men." "There was a gentle courtesy in the talk and manner of these two men [Owen and John Jr.] that I cannot write down for you; and I surely never met so thorough, genuine modesty." "Like his brother Jason, who survives him, Owen was strong in stature, noble, brave, manly, yet kind and gentle as a woman, as sweet in disposition as a child; his character pure, almost Christ-like. I might add that no race of men, perhaps, in the present century better exemplified the true Christian character than this same family of Browns, from the rugged, brave old martyr, John Brown, to the gray-haired, patient Jason, who returns alone to his mountain home." Owen's hermit life in California provoked much comment. "Very eccentric, kind-hearted, but improvident." He was compared with Thoreau, though "without his learning and genius." He had been "mentally astray for some time." "It is said that in stature and general features, Owen much resembled his father, but in mental characteristics, particularly during his last days, he was decidedly different, there being in his composition a conspicuous absence of that energy, push and spirit for which the elder Brown was noted. ...Retired in manners, he was a man of peace, gentle as a child, holding no ill feelings toward anyone, exhibiting no hatred, even to those who brought about his father's execution. ...Though industrious, neither he nor Jason had the knack of accumulating property, any surplus money or means they had being given to the poor. In fact, it was said by those who knew them best that the Browns could get nothing nor keep the little they had." Owen was "generous to a fault, giving poorer neighbors all that he earns except the merest pittance for his own simple wants." "He bore the likeness of his father more perfectly than either of his brothers, and in many characteristics was like him. He possesses a strong constitution, iron nerve, capable of great physical endurance, loving most forgiveness and mercy, and still possessing that true courage which from conviction of right knows no fear."In 1855, with his brothers he settled in Kansas, near Osawatomie. As a pioneer on the plains of Kansas, he first encountered the iron heel of American slavery. He grappled with the monster, and the first blood of that great struggle was shed; not at Sumter, but on the plains of Kansas. He was the last living representative of the 23 men who so severely wounded the monster Slavery at Harpers Ferry; was one of the five who escaped. His connection with the anti-slavery cause until its overthrow has become a matter of history. Like his father, he never undertook a service which he did not fully believe merited the blessing of God. Stern and just when occasion demanded, but no man ever saw mankind more tender or forgiving, or happier in time of peace when he was able to add something to the measure of human happiness. An earnest advocate of temperance always, self-sacrificing, even at great personal loss, he found more happiness in defending a principle, in helping the poor or rescuing the unfortunate, than in an earthly gain. Thus his life has been spent in doing good always, reverencing the Great Master whom he faithfully served, believing that the golden rule applied to all mankind should be the rule of life."
Abolitionist activities Kansas Owen fought together with his father in Kansas and was present at the sack of Lawrence. Border ruffians from Missouri burned his house and stole his cattle. He participated, along with brother-in-law Henry Thompson, in the Pottawatomie massacre. "He was imprisoned, ill-treated, and finally driven from the State, for the sole reason that he was an abolitionist." In 1888 and 1889 he recalled some of his Kansas activities.
Harpers Ferry
Owen was the only child of Brown to participate in the Chatham, Ontario, meeting in which the raid was planned. He was chosen as treasurer of the organization, of which John Brown was president.
Owen, as he told it later, before the raid "spent many months in the mountains of the South, searching out suitable places for the rendezvous and concealment of liberty-seeking slaves". During the three months before the raid, his father, under cover of prospecting for minerals, examined and approved of a number of them.
Owen participated in his father's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. He was guarding weapons at the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, and did not enter Harpers Ferry itself. When the raid failed, with a $25,000 reward on his head (), he escaped capture and underwent what has been called "the most difficult and tedious flight that ever occurred in this country". After nearly three months of hiding and travelling at night, living on raw potatoes and uncooked corn taken from fields and nearly starving, his shoes having given out, he arrived at Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where he had lived as a child . There he was fed and helped recuperate by a Quaker who remembered his father. Now near the Ohio border, he reached the safety of the home of his brother John Jr., at that time in Dorset, Ashtabula County, Ohio, some from Harpers Ferry. (This article was reprinted in several newspapers.) Together with him in John Jr.'s home for three weeks were fellow escaped raiders Barclay Coppock and Francis Jackson Meriam, as well as Brown's first biographer, James Redpath.
In early February 1860 Owen was indicted by a Virginia grand jury for "conspiring with slaves to create an insurrection". On March 8, 1860, the new governor of Virginia, John Letcher, announced a $500 reward () for his apprehension and delivery to Virginia. The Attorney General of Ohio, Republican Christopher Wolcott, refused to honor Virginia's request for Owen's arrest and extradition. Owen remained in Ohio for many years.
Owen was the last surviving member of the raiding party; his older brothers John Jr. and Jason did not participate, and his half-sister Annie Brown Adams outlived him, but was sent home from the Kennedy farm before the raid.
Put-in-Bay, Ohio
Owen was "extremely averse to talking at all about the exciting adventures of his early days". A reporter had to make many visits to get him to tell the story of his difficult escape, which he said he had never told in 12 years. Mark Twain's comment on this report was: "Three different times I tried to read it but was frightened off each time before I could finish."