My focus has tended toward the women of the Adirondack peaks, from Esther Mountain to Mount Jo (Josephine\/Jane Scofield), Mount Inez (Inez Milholland), and Grace Peak (Grace Hudowalski). I also wrote about the untold and un-promoted stories of Adirondack women, such as abolitionist Mary Brown, writer\/lecturer\/reformer Kate Field and photographer Katherine\u00a0 McClelland. Those three remarkable women prompted my entry into the labyrinth of John Brown history. For two decades, I managed to stick to those women and avoid the muddled\u00a0 maze, or so I thought. Then, it dawned on me that Mary had been misleading me; I had strayed right into the trap.<\/p>\n
Without realizing it, I had come to know John Brown, the man, through the eyes of his wife. Once again, I had followed a herd path and landed in an unexpected place: writing a John Brown biography.<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/cover-small.jpg\")
Sandra Weber shares how she came to author \u201cJohn Brown in New York.\u201d Photo provided by Sandra Weber.<\/p>\n
\u00a0It was a humungous task unlike anything I had ever attempted. There was so much material to digest. So many details to analyze, theories to scrutinize, questions to answer. So much puffery and fake news to slog through. The more I learned, the more I knew I needed to learn more. Month by month, the Adirondack perspective of John Brown became clearer, the book\u2019s purpose grew stronger and my uncertainty turned to conviction.<\/p>\n
Eventually, as I completed the last of several revisions, a tagline revealed itself: who he is in the Adirondacks is who he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is precisely what Mary Brown showed me. When asked if her husband was insane, Mary said, \u201cI couldn\u2019t say\u2026that my husband was insane\u2014even to save his life; because he wasn\u2019t.\u201d Another time, she said that if John were insane, \u201che had been consistent in his insanity from the very first moment she knew him.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Brown\u2019s actions and words and convictions at Kansas and Harpers Ferry were consistent with his North Elba character. He believed in the words of the Bible, the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence\u2014and put them into daily practice. He was a family patriarch, good Christian, common farmer and helpful neighbor with extraordinary egalitarianism and moral virtues. He hated oppression, injustice and slavery. He loved family, God and country and was willing to sacrifice comfort, safety and life to execute his duty and responsibility. Wealth, fame and power held no appeal for him. John Brown was not confused or duplicitous or erratic; his conscience was clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, in big actions as in small deeds, John Brown had a propensity for delay, a quirky sense of humor, an endless supply of optimism and a heap of advice in even the tiniest details. He delayed his move to the Adirondacks in 1849, and his return in 1855.\u00a0 As Adirondack winter set in, he suggested the Black settlers should \u201cbusy themselves in cutting plenty of hard wood\u2026they need not fear getting too much wood provided.\u201d (No joke in the Adirondacks.) When he was away from home, he often wrote to those in North Elba: \u201ctry to be cheerful,\u201d \u201chope in God\u201d and \u201cencourage each other.\u201d That could be difficult at times; son Owen said, \u201con the 6th of June we could not clear away the manure from the Barn because it was half Ice yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
When John Brown discussed placement of his house, he suggested it be level with, or even below, the water source. \u201cI would be at a good deal of pains to avoid lugging water up a steep place,\u201d he said. He also wanted his house \u201cto stand square with the world, longest East and West with doors opening through it North and South.\u201d (Quintessential John Brown.) To keep the cold out of the new house, John suggested son Watson cover the exterior with \u201ccheap straight-edged boards.\u201d He advised him to run the boards from the ground to the eaves \u201cbarn fashion\u201d and hammer the nails only partway so the boards could be removed later and re-used.<\/p>\n
Brown stood frugal, and resolute. He intended to bring a lawsuit to recover a $3 tax he paid on grazing land (even though the lawyer fees might amount to $10.) He told son Wason how to sign a money draft (\u201cacross the back\u2026about two inches from the top end\u201d) and Mary how to mail letters (\u201cI need not say, do all your directing and sealing at home, and not at the post-office.\u201d) Even while preparing for his greatest action in Harpers Ferry, John inquired about the crops at the farm and asked the women to help the boys pick up stones and sticks on the meadows before the grass grew too high. He also instructed them to sow cloverseed and Hungarian grass seed on 1\/16 of an acre as an experiment, which he would never see to fruition.<\/p>\n
What occurred in the Adirondacks would resound in Harpers Ferry. In one of her final letters to her husband, Mary Brown wrote: \u201cYou know that Moses was not allowed to go into the land of Canaan; so you are not allowed to see your desire carried out.\u201d Virginia hanged John Brown on December 2, 1859. Nevertheless, the seeds he planted would culminate in the freeing of millions of enslaved people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For more information about \u201cJohn Brown in New York: The Man, His Family, and the Adirondack Landscape\u201d and the author, see John Brown in New York preview<\/a> and www.johnbrownNY.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I first came to know the Adirondack Mountains as a hiker and quickly became obsessed with the place.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7183,2878,881,42397,42398,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-88363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-adirondack-almanack","tag-books","tag-history","tag-john-brown","tag-john-brown-farm","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}