John Brown

John Brown soon established himself as a leading citizen when, as a young man in 1826, he moved his family from Hudson, Ohio, to Crawford County, Pennsylvania. They settled in area that was part of Randolph Township, later split into Richmond Township. For the scattered population of that backwoods locale, the two-story tannery that Brown ambitiously built and the workers he hired to help him make leather provided a pioneer industry. Brown maintained a farm as well as a tannery, and was said to have been the first to bring purebred cattle and other livestock to the area.

John Brown spearheaded other developments to improve the community. With a neighbor, Thomas Delamater, who lived four miles away, he started an alternating school and hired an in-home teacher. Delamater’s children boarded and schooled at Brown’s log cabin during winters, and Brown’s children did the same at Delamater’s place during summers. Brown organized a Congregational church for the neighborhood. He wrote the articles of faith, certified members in good standing as the church’s clerk, and sometimes brought in preachers. He often led the worship services, held either in the tannery or in Brown’s home or barn or in a schoolhouse that he later built. Brown also was on a committee that furnished Bibles to families in the township who didn’t have one of their own. The committee was part of the Meadville Bible Society.

Meadville was (and is) the seat of Crawford County. To fund improvement of the state road between Meadville and the county’s eastern line, Brown served on a group of trustees who were appointed to raise community subscriptions. Brown successfully petitioned for establishment of a post office at Randolph. He was its first postmaster, by appointment of President John Quincy Adams. In addition, he carried mail along the state road, maintaining a 20-mile route that ran from Meadville to Riceville through Randolph.

Brown was noted for helping neighbors in need and displaying a high regard for integrity and justice. His convictions included a lifelong opposition to slavery. Although absorbed in business and community pursuits while residing in Randolph, Brown nevertheless gave thought to what he practically could do to help put an end to slavery. To his brother, Frederick, in Ohio, he wrote of hoping to obtain a slaveholder’s release or sale of “at least one negro boy or youth” so that Brown and his wife could rear and educate him as one of their own children. Writing from Randolph in late 1834, Brown further said: “I have for years been trying to devise some way to get a school a-going here for blacks, and I think that on many accounts it would be a most favorable location.” Brown knew that slaveholders prevented slaves from learning to read and write in order to keep them in bondage. Breaking that cycle of illiteracy, Brown believed, would advance the cause of emancipation: “If the young blacks of our country could once become enlightened, it would most assuredly operate on slavery like firing powder confined in rock, and all slaveholders know it well. Witness their heaven-daring laws against teaching blacks.”

For business and financial reasons, Brown decided to sell his property, and the school plan never materialized. He and his family moved back to Ohio in 1835, having lived in Pennsylvania for about a decade. Brown made occasional return visits to Crawford County where, according to persons who knew him, he spoke of a growing belief that God had called him to strike a blow against slavery.

Brown ultimately acted on that belief when he led a small party of men — whites and blacks alike — into Virginia on a mission to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and start a slave insurrection in the South. Most of the men were killed during the raid. Brown, plus some other raiders who survived, was captured and then hanged after being tried and convicted on criminal charges. An 1885 history of Crawford County said this of the local reaction: “While in Richmond Township [Brown] was a strong advocate of slavery abolition, but withal maintained the confidence and esteem of both political friend and foe. His many neighbors … deplored his fate, and if not in accord with his philanthropic sentiments threw the mantle of charity over his rash deeds by believing his impulses for the liberation of the African race too powerful to be restrained.”