PLATTSBURGH — When Mary Ann Day Brown arrived in Red Bluff, California, on Sept. 30, 1864, the widow left behind her abolitionist-martyr husband’s remains in a four-year-old grave in North Elba.
The Brown family’s 14 years there is the subject of author Sandra Weber’s new book, “John Brown in New York: The Main, His Family and the Adirondack Landscape,” published by Excelsior Editions, an imprint of SUNY Press.
Weber lives in a log cabin about 25 miles from the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, and for the last 30 years, she has scoured dusty archives in several states and the internet to compile way too much for this book, with another one in the wings.
Weber is the author of “The Woman Suffrage State” and “Adirondack Roots: Stories of Hiking, History and Women.”
INTERVIEW
Robin Caudell: Why did you want to write this book?
Weber: This is the long story: When I first started coming to the Adirondacks in the 1980s, I was hiking, and then I discovered the John Brown Farm and the stuff about John Brown, and I became more interested in the history of the Adirondacks and all of that.
I started, of course, writing about Adirondack women that I was discovering. I was always more interested in Mary Brown, John Brown’s wife, than in John Brown, so I became very interested in Mary Brown and her story and planned to write a book about her. I even did a residency at Harper’s Ferry for a month. I did write about her in “Breaking Trail” and an article in “Civil War Times” or something, you know. So I kept being interested in her.
Other books kept coming along, and that one never got written. So when I moved up here full-time in 2012, I started going to the farm more and became very interested in the farm, and then talking to people who were visiting there and such, I realized that the story of the farm itself had never really been told and documented, and that was really needed because people didn’t understand why all the different things were there — all the memorials, the dates of when things happened and stuff. I said, “This book needs to be written instead of a biography of Mary Brown.” Also, I thought it was very relevant to what was going on in the country.
I started concentrating on the history of the John Brown Farm. I ended up writing, spending so much time. There so much material about John Brown and such. I finally wrote a book, which was, as the publisher told me, “You have two or three books here.” It was just way too much material. As we talked, it became clear that one of the themes that I had there was John Brown in the Adirondacks and how he pertained to the Adirondacks, what happened when he was here and when his family was here and what they did. I never really intended to concentrate on John Brown, but I realized I had this perspective of John Brown from a completely different angle than other people that had written about him.
I had learned his story, really, through the eyes of his wife and his children and through the eyes of the Adirondacks. So that was a very different perspective than other people had. I also realized that had never been told before, the Adirondack perspective.
As I was doing research, everything that I read had something wrong in it factually. There was so much misinterpretation, or just parts of it were completely ignored. Many of the authors just kept repeating the same stories that had been repeated in the previous books and hadn’t really gone back to original documentation. That’s why subtitle is the man, not the symbol, but the man — the human side of John Brown and his family — which is really conveyed in their life in the Adirondacks in those final 10 years of John Brown’s life. There are so many family letters — letter of their neighbors, their friends, diaries, observations by visitors to the Adirondacks. There was lot of material there that I think could really tell what was really going on with the family and their daily actions, their words. I felt that that really told a story of who John Brown is and who his family is, which, in the end, answers the question that everybody want to know, which is why did he go to Kansas? Why did he turn to violence? Why did he raid Harpers Ferry? You can’t understand the why, I think, without understanding who he is, and I think this Adirondack story conveys who the family is.
Caudell: What was your process? Research? Writing?
Weber: This was probably the most difficult book that I have ever written. It took me more than 30 years to get here, so there was a lot of research and kind, writing and research at the same time. The research, like, never ended, even when I was putting final changes in. I was still discovering new things to say. The book probably went through, like, five major revisions, so there was a lot of analysis, thinking, bringing fragments together, seeing themes. It was a very, very long, intense process. It really consumed my life for the last five years. Like, completely consumed it.
I didn’t want to tell this story in fragments. I didn’t want to say, “Here’s Black history. Here’s women’s history. Here’s abolition history. Here’s things relevant to class,” or this or that. I wanted to integrate all these issues to give a picture of what the time and place was really like. We don’t live life in silos. It’s very messy as we live life, right? and that’s the way it really was. John Brown wasn’t just talking slavery day in and day out, every minute. He had to make choices.
At the same time as he’s trying to help the Black settlers in North Elba, his sons and grandchildren are in Kansas, and they’re getting threatened and harassed by pro-slavery settlers. He has to make choices about things. “Am I going to leave my wife and children here alone at the farm in North Elba to fend for themselves because I need to go to Kansas to help my sons?” There’s this integration of all these issues. Sometimes, we try to separate and just stick to a concentration on one subject. I tried to blend all of those together as life is actually lived, if that makes sense.
Caudell: Any discoveries in this 30-year search?
Weber: This is not a significant thing that I didn’t know, but one of the things I found extremely interesting to me, especially personally, is that from the moment I came to the Adirondacks, I just fell in love with it — the mountains, the people, the scenery, the history, everything. I never knew what to call that. It felt like home to me. My heart was here. I could never put a word or a term onto that. I discovered that John Brown and his family called this a “disease,” and they called it “Essex fever.” John Brown often referred to North Elba as Essex — by the county name. They had Essex fever. I just thought that really explained to me that they had this love of the Adirondacks, the mountains and whatever, and, especially for them, they felt God’s omnipotence here. In the wilderness, they felt closer to God and more dependent on God.
I think the other thing is coming to a realization of just what life was actually like for them here and how much they were willing to sacrifice. Sacrifice in terms of not only having luxuries, just the basic comforts of life. They were willing to sacrifice for the cause of other people, the cause of freedom. That really surprised me. Also sacrifice in a different way, not only in the physical necessities of life, but in the separation of family, of Mary being at the farm without John there to help her, or the children not seeing their father for a year and half, that emotional separation. That really comes through in the family letters back and forth, just the toil of that, the emotional separation.
Caudell: How did you get to SUNY Albany?
Weber: Like I said, it was an enormous book. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’ve used a lot of different presses, and I couldn’t’ figure out which was the right one, so as soon as I proposed it to them, they were immediately interested in it. But they were interested in this John Brown in New York period, which is basically from 1848 to 1863 when the Brown family left North Elba.
Caudell: Tell me, why did they decide to go?
Weber: After John was executed. So now North Elba became kind of this calvary of the cause, the symbol of John Brown because his body is here. His grave really focused attention on North Elba, and the whole thing with the raid and his execution was all national news constantly. Even in North Elba, where a lot of people really respect him, like him, and believed he was a great citizen and everything, there still are those who believe that he shouldn’t have broken the law, he shouldn’t have messed with other people’s property. So there are pro-slavery forces in the North just as much as in the South that did not believe in what John Brown did, and so it was very difficult for them to be around this, especially as the Civil War started.
Salmon wasn’t even allowed to the forces because the Union officers didn’t want to be in a regiment with the son of John Brown because they felt it would draw too much attention to them. These are very plain, quiet, humble people, and suddenly they are national celebrities, right? Which brought them a lot of aid, sympathy and compassion on one hand, and on the other hand it brought them a lot of criticism. I think, you know, eventually they just decided, at least the children decided, it would better to go off and try to start new or whatever. I don’t think Mary really wanted to leave, but when all of her other children were leaving, how was she going to stay there by herself at the farm? It was too difficult, so she went with them.
Caudell: What is the final beat in your book?
Weber: The final thing is that they’re leaving, and John Brown’s grave is left there. There is a painting of the grave, I think it’s William Trost Richards from late 1863-1864, which the Adirondack Experience Museum actually purchased at auction just a couple of years ago. It was so fascinating to be able go see this, and I wish it could have been in the book in color; it’s in there in black and white. To me, it kind of tells the thing of that his grave is there, we are in the middle of the Civil War, his grave is kind of telling this idea of seeds being sown and what shall rise from the seed. When you plant a hero, more heroes will grow. It’s kind of going back to what John Brown is really working for. It’s just not an end to slavery — that is a rebirth of the country, right? It’s weird because I wrote all of this before I realized that his book was going to be relevant in 2026 and the American Revolution anniversary. The unfinished revolution, that is what John Brown is talking about — rebirth of liberty and freedom.