Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1889 — HARPER’S FERRY. [ARTICLE]

HARPER’S FERRY.

The Fate of the Participants in the Famous Bald—John Brown’s Family. The recent death and burial of Owen Brown, the third son of “Old John Brown,” whose soul has been “marching on” for so many years, recalls the association of the Harper’s Ferry raid October, 1859. With Owen, who lived several years and died near Pasadena, Los Angeles County, Cal., has gone the last actual participant in the famous attack on chattel slavery in Virginia. There were twenty-three persons actually connected with the raid, excluding the neighborhood slaves who joined Capt. Brown. Of the latter it is positively known that some twenty-five acted with the raiders. They all claimed, however, to have been impressed by them. It is understood that about 200 in all were made acquainted, in some degree, with Brown’s enterprise. Six Massachusetts colored men were to participate. Only one arrived, and he did not get into the fight. Seventeen of the twenty-three were white and six were colored. Of the party eighteen ■were killed in the fight or hanged afterwards ; five escaped. These were Barclay Coppoe, killed in October, 1861, by the falling of a train through the Platte bridge, the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad bridge having been burned by Rebel guerrillas; George Plummer Tidd, soldier in a Massachusetts regiment, who died of fever on a gunboat the day in 1862 that Burnside’s expedition took Roanoke Island, N. C.; Francis Jackson Meriam, who served with colored troops till the war closed and went to Mexico to join Juarez in 1865. He has not since been heard from. It was his money that finally enabled John Brown to move. Owen Brown was the other white man who escaped. He was 64 years old when he died. His half-brothers, Oliver and Watson, were not quite 21 and 24, respectively, when killed at Harper's Ferry. His own brother, Frederick, was killed at Ossawatomic, Kan., in 1856. There are now living of the Brown family: John Jr., 69, with wife and one child; Ruth, now 60 years old, wife of Henry Thompson. Both families live at Put-in-Bay Island, Sandusky Bay, Lake Erie, O. Two brothers of Ruth, William and Dauphin, were killed in the Harper’s Ferry raid. Oliver’s wife was Ruth’s sister. She died soon after her husband. This made seven lost from the Brown and Thompson families. Jason, John/Brown's second son, 66 years of age, lives at Pasadena; Salmon, now 53, lives at Red Bank, Cal., as do also Anne, Sarah, ancLEID"his sisters. Hazlett es--f-fwxrrtrat were captured by Pennsylvania's in the Chamberßburg Valley and returned to Virginia, where they were executed, Hazlett being hung as William Harrison, a name signed to some letters written by Richard J. Hinton, according to an agreement between him and John H. Kagi. They were found in the famous carpet-bag with John Brown’s Provisional Constitution for a free government and other papers. Of the colored men one only escaped. Osborne P. Anderson wa3 a handsome, intelligent mulatto from Canada. He died in Washington in 1869 or 1870. Newby and Anderson were killed during the fighting. Leary, Copeland, and Shields Green were hsnged. A brother of Copeland was at J the close of the Civil War a Second Lieutenant of Artillery in a battery of colored soldiers. Of those who were actually privy to John Brown’s intentions and in a minor degree participated somewhat there are still alive the following persons: I. M. Shadd, of Detroit, colored, who participated in the convention at Chatham, Canada, and Frederick* Douglass, who at Chambersburg, Pa., declined to act further with Brown in a movement so audacious and, as he feared, likely to be so barren of good results. There are perhaps half a dozen other colored men who were partially in Brown’s confi--dence. Of the white men there are now living only George D. Gill, who was chosen Secretary of the Treasury at Chatham and was prevented by sickness from being in Virginia. He lives in Kansas, as does Luke F. Parsons, and C. W. Moffett, both early members of the original party. They declined to go to Virginia. Frank B. Sanborn and Prof. Morton were advisers and literary confidants of John Brown. Richard j. Hinton, who tried hard to get to Harper’s Ferry from Kansas, is a working journalist in this city. —New York World.