This tour attempts to follow a historic route. Please use a road map to accompany this tour booklet. Modern day travelers cannot cross Lake Champlain at Arnold's Bay and must take the bridge from Addison, Vermont to Crown Point, New York. Take Route 9N/22 ten miles to the Camp Dudley road in Westport to resume the tour.

The total mileage from Vergennes to North Elba is approximately 67 miles. Allow at least 3 hours for the complete tour, or spend the day, or several days taking the journey and exploring the Lake Champlain communities of Vermont and New York. The tour ends at Lake Placid, New York.

On the Trail of John Brown is based upon what Mary Brown saw as the funeral cortege of John Brown, the abolitionist, traveled from the train depot in Vergennes, Vermont to the family farm in North Elba, New York.

We will look at the buildings that still exist along the route of the funeral cortege and describe the landscapes that they would have passed over. Of particular note are the sites relevant to the life of John Brown, the anti-slavery movement, and/or sites mentioned by members of the funeral cortege in 1859.

It took two days for the cortege to travel this relatively short distance, leaving the train depot early Tuesday morning, December 6, and arriving in North Elba on Wednesday evening, December 7, 1859.

Introduction

John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, to a Calvinist family and he was certainly influenced by his father, Owen, who believed human bondage to be a sin against God. The family soon moved to Hudson, Ohio, where John followed in his father's footsteps as a tanner and farmer. At the age of twelve, Brown witnessed the severe beating of a Negro youth. This scene, coupled with his strong religious beliefs, influenced his later support and fervor for the anti-slavery movement. Following his marriage to Dianthe Lusk, the family moved to Pennsylvania in 1826 where Brown built a tannery. Brown's wife died following childbirth. He soon married seventeen-year-old Mary Day, who cared for Brown's five children and later had thirteen of their own. Difficult economic times as a farmer in Ohio resulted in bankruptcy for Brown and he lost all but the essentials. In the mid-1840s Brown moved the family to Springfield, Massachusetts where he partnered in a wool brokerage firm, opening a warehouse there.

It was in the late 1840s that John Brown met with philanthropist and abolitionist, Gerrit Smith, at Smith's Peterboro, New York home. Brown learned of Smith's "settlements" for Negroes in eight New York State counties and especially one settlement, known as Timbuctoo, in North Elba. Coming from all walks of life, three thousand Negro grantees had been given over 120,000 acres of land. After visiting the Adirondack settlement, Brown offered to "take up a farm" and help the fledgling farmers. It was in May of 1849 that John and Mary Brown, accompanied by seven of their children, first came to settle in North Elba, New York. In November 1849, Brown and two of his sons purchased 244 acres from Gerrit Smith to build their family home. Brown moved back to Ohio for a time, but returned to North Elba in 1855 to move into his new home built by Henry Thompson, husband of Brown's daughter Ruth. By this time, only ten Negro families from the original "settlement" remained.

Turmoil over slavery erupted in Kansas and Brown traveled there to join his sons in "the cause of freedom." Brown, in an open rebellion against slavery, led armed raids in 1856 at Pottawatomie Creek and Osawatomie, Kansas. Finally, "Free-staters" won control of the legislature in Kansas and Brown moved his rebellion back east. It was on October 16, 1859 that Brown, fourteen white men, and four black men attempted a raid on the arsenal and rifle factory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. The armed raiders were tried and convicted of "treason, advising and conspiring with slaves and others to rebel and murder in the first degree." Brown was hanged in Charlestown, Virginia on December 2, 1859.

John Brown's journey into the history books thus begins with his widow, Mary Brown, accompanied by the famed orator, Wendall Philips, taking possession of his body and beginning the long, trying trip home to North Elba.

NEXT PAGE