Summit County, Ohio - Chapter 15: Greatness Achieved by Summit County Sons, 1908

John Brown. Edward Rowland Sill

There are two names in the history of Summit County up to the year 1907, which, in the years to come, will stand out far above all others. The name of one who lived among us will always be honored because of the memories associated with the anti-slavery struggle; the fame of the other is secure because of the perfection of his art. One wrought; the other wrote. Although they are the greatest by far of all Summit County's citizens, yet neither of them was a native of the county. They were both born in Connecticut, and the places of their birth were but forty miles apart. Nor, was the great work which each of them did, accomplished in Summit County. Nevertheless, as a large part of the lifetime of each was spent within her borders, the county claim? them both as her own sons. She views with increasing pride the added fame which the years bring to the memory of John Brown of Osawatomie, and Edward Rowland Sill, one of the worthiest and truest of American poets.

Torrington, in Western Connecticut, is set amid all the glories of the Housatonic Moun- . tains. Nature presents few landscapes more charming than this idyllic region. Litchfield, which means so much to the residents of Summit County is only a few miles to the southwest. John Brown was born at Torrington on the 9th day of ilay in the year 1800. The town record supplies the date and states that he was the son of Owen and Ruth Brown. He was a direct descendant of Peter Brown, an English Puritan carpenter who was on6 of the Mayflower company. His ancestors, too, had been part of that remarkable colony which founded Windsor, Connecticut. In his own words, he was born of "poor but respectable parents." His father was a tanner and shoemaker who was often hard put to in order to provide the bare necessaries of life for his faanily. His grandfather was Captain John Brown, of the Revolutionary Army. Hi^ mother was Ruth IVIills and she, too, could boast of a father who had fought with great credit in the war of the Revolution. His mother was of Dutch descent, her first American ancestor being Peter Mills who emigrated from Holland about 1700.

In 1805 Owen Brown moved with his wife and babies to Ohio. It was an emigration rather than a moving; for the way was long and toilsome and beset with many perils. They settled in Hudson, which at that time was only a clearing in an almost unbroken wilderness. In the story of his life John mentions that it was filled with Indians and wild beasts. During the first few years of his life in Hudson, he was accustomed to intimate association with the Indians; his early playmates were Indians and from them he learned much woodcraft and some of their language. He mentions with much feeling the loss of a yellow imarble (the first he ever had), which had been given to him by an Indian boy. Soon after settling in Hudson, his father was made a trustee of Oberlin College. This speaks volumes for the standing of the family and the character of that worthy father. In spite of the scholastic connection of his father, however, the youthful John received very scanty schooling. Dres.sed in his rough buck- .skin clothes he preferred to tend the cattle and .«heep, and roam on long trips in the forest. AVhen onlv twelve vears old he made a trip of over a hundred miles driving alone a herd of cattle. He enjoyed immensely the hardest and roughest sports, and lost no opportunity to "wrestle, snow-ball, run, jump and knock off old seedy wool hats." Perhaps the battles in Kansas were being won on the field of those rough frontier sports in Ohio. His mother died when he was eight years old, and the poor little fellow mourned for her for years. His father soon married again, but his heart remained lonely for his mother. At ten years he commenced reading books. It is easy to determine how that rugged character was formed by considering the sources of its inspiration. From that time on, his favorite books were: first and always, The Holv Bible; then Baxter's Saints' Rest; The Pilgrim's Progress; Josephus' Works, Plutarch's Lives; The Life of Oliver Cromwell; Rollin's Ancient History; Napoleon and His Marshals; and Henry on Meekness.

At the age of sixteen he joined the Congregational Church at Hudson, and remained a steadfa.st and bible-reading Christian all the days of his life. After he became a nationnl character, the extent of his Bible knowledge was much marvelled at. About this time he determined to study for tbe ministry and entered the Hallock School, Plainfield, Ma=sachusetts, and also Morris Academy in Connecticut. Inflammation of the eyes compelled him to quit study, and he returned to his business of tanning hides in Hudson. He was made foreman in his father's tannery and also mastered the art of .surveying. Subsequent sui-veys showed that Iiis early surveys Avere made with great accuracy.

On June 21, 1820, he was married in Hudson to Dianthe Lusk, of that village. He describes her as "a remarkably plain, but neat, industrious and economical girl, of excellent character, earnest piety and good, practical common-scn.?e." He confesses that .«he "maintained a most powerful and good influence over him" so long as she lived. By her, he had seven children, the first three of whom were born in Hudson, Ohio; the others in Richmond, Pennsylvania. These children were John Brown. Jr.; Jason Brown, now livijig in -Vkron ; Owen Brown ; Frederick Brown ; Ruth Brown, who afterward married Henry Thompson ; Frederick Brown, murdered in the Kansas trouble by Rev. Martin White; and an infant son who died three daj's after birth. Jason Brown was born in Hudson, January 19, 1823. He was the most prominent of the "Sons of Hudson" who returned for the "Old Home Festival" in the autumn of 1907, having walked all the way from Akron to Hudson to attend it. In 1826, John Brown moved to Richmond, Crowford County, Pennsylvania, where he carried on the business of tanner until 1835. His wife died here in Augu.st, 1832, and he soon remarried. His second wife was Mary A. Day, who bore him thirteen children as follows: Sarah Brown, born May 11, 1834, at Richmond, Pennsylvania; Watson Brown, October 7, 1834, at Franklin Mills, Ohio, (now Kent, Ohio) ; Salmon Brown, October 2, 1836, Hudson, Ohio; Charles Brown, November 3, 1837, Hudson, Ohio; Oliver Brown, March 9, 1839, Franklin Mills, Ohio; Peter Brown, December 7, 1840, Hudson, Ohio; Austin Brown, September 14, 1842, Richfield, Summit County, Ohio; Anne Brown, December 23, 1843, Richfield, Ohio ; Amelia Brown, June 22, 1845, Akron, Ohio; Sarah Brown (2d) September 11, 1846, Akron; Ellen Brown, Mav 20, 1848, Springfield. Massachusetts; infant son, April 26, 1852, Akron, died May 17, 1852, and Ellen Brown (2d), September 25, 1854, Akron.

In 1835 he moved back to Ohio; this time settling at Franklin Mills (now Kent) in Portage County. He was unfortunate in the real estate business here, and in 1840 he returned to Hudson and formed a partnership with Heman Oviatt, of Richfield, to engage in the wool business. In 1842 he moved across the Cuyahoga Valley to Richfield, where he lived two years. AVhile living in Richfield four of his children died. In 1844 he moved with his family to Akron and formed a partnership with Col. Simon Perkins, of Akron, to engage in the wool business. The firm name was Perkins & Brown and they sold large quantities of wool on commission. John

Brown was an expert judge of wool; in fact, he had few equals. His reputation as a wool expert extended over the whole eastern part of the countrj'. A Massachusetts friend relates this anecdote of him : "Give him two samples of wool, one grown in Ohio and the other in Vermont, and he would distinguish each of them in the dark. One evening, in England, one of the party wLshing to play a trick -on the Yankee farmer, handed him a sample and asked him what he would do with such wool as that. His eyes and fingers were then so good that he had only to touch it to kno^' that it had not the minute hooks by which the fibers of wool are attached to each other. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'if you have any machinery that will work up dog's hair, I would advise you to put this into it.' The jocose Briton had sheared a poodle and brought the hair in his pocket, but the laugh went against him, and Captain Brown, in spite of some peculiarities of dress and manner, soon won the respect of all whom he met."

Perkins it Brown was not a success. Tlie failure was due solely to John Brown's lack of business instinct. He was not intended by Nature for a business career. He lacked all the fundamental requisites. He was by nature a dreamer, a seer, a poet, if you will. The impulses or intuitions he had at sixteen were correct; he would have made a splendid preacher. Colonel Perkins said of him: "He had little judgment, always followed his own will, and lost much money." During his residence of two years in Akron, he lived in the frame house on the top of Perkins Hill, now occupied by Hon. Charles E. Perkins, and which for several years was used as a club-house liy The Portage Golf Club. In the spring of 1846 he went to Springfield, Massachusetts as the agent for certain large wool growers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1848 he went to England with 200,000 pounds of wool, which he was compelled to sell at about half its value. His record as a wool factor is a series of failures. He was now reduced to poverty again.

quixotic plan to found a colony of negro settlers in the wild lands of the Adirondack wilderness, and moved his family there in that year, settling in North Elba, Essex County, New York. Mr. Smith gave John Brown the land and the latter started to clear it and endeavored to show the negro how to cultivate and plant their farms in the colony. North Elba was the home of his family until the time of his death. It was a wild, cold and bleak place, and they suffered many privations while living there. From that time on John Brown's business was to fight slaverj'. He had been an abolitionist since the war of 1812. His witnessing the ill-treatment of a little slave boy, about his own age, to whom he was much attached, brought home to him the evils of human slavery and led him to declare eternal war with slavery. "This brought John to reflect on the wretched, hopeless condition of fatherless and motherless slave children, for such children have neither fathers nor mothers to protect and provide for them. He would sometimes raise the question : 'Is God their Father?' " - Autobiographical letter to Harry Stearns. Verily, God was their Father and was even then "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wi'ath are stored." In 1837. while the whole family were assembled for prayer, John Brown made them all take a solemn oath to work with him for the freeing of the slaves, and then, kneeling, they invoked the blessing of God on their compact In Ohio and also in Massachusetts, he was active in assisting runaway slaves to escape.

In 1854 his sons began to emigrate to Kansas, intending to settle there and grow to wealth with the country. In two years five of them, John, Jr., Jason, Owen, Frederick and Salmon, had located in the new territory. They built their rude huts not far from the Missouri line, and, as it later turned out, right in the center of the struggle between the Free State and Pro-Slavery forces. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had prohibited slavery in the new territory; the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed that prohibition and allowed the settlers in the new territory to decide the question for themselves. Then the Kansas war was on. The Brown brothers found themselv&s drawn into it. Perhaps they remembered their oaths of 1837. At any rate, they wrote to their father to send them arms, and finally asked him to come and help them. The father did both. September, 1855, found John Brown in Kansas fighting his first big battles for the freedom of the slaves. In March, 1856, the time for the election whether the state should be "free" or "slave," Kansas was invaded by 5,000 Missourians, who took possession of the polls and controlled the election. From that time the war was on in good earnest. Its record is a part of our national history, and this is not the proper place to review the stirring incidents of those times. John Brown was now a national figure. He was the leader of the Free State forces. June 2, 1856, he won the "battle" of Black Jack. In August he was in command of the "Kansas Cavalry." On August 30, 1856, he won the fight called the "battle of Osawatomie." It was from this battle that he got that nickname which has always clung to him. On September 15, 1856, he was in command of the defenders of the town of Lawrence and successfully resisted the attack of the "Missouri Ruffians." These fights are called "battles" ; in reality, they were skirmishes in a guerrilla warfare. It was as a guerrilla leader that John Brown won his successes. By his activity he made it impossible to hold slaves in Kansas and thus the state was saved to the cause of Freedom.

In October, 1856, he started, with his sons, for the East, begging assistance for the Kansas cause as he journeyed. On the 18th of February, 1857, he addressed the Massachusetts legislature in a notable speech. He spent the winter with his family at North Elba, New York, and, in making speeches, collecting money for the cause and, buying arms. He alreadv liad Harper's Ferry in his mind. Autumn of 1857 found him in Iowa raising his forces and drillino- them for the invasion of Virginia. Mo.st of 1858 was spent in Kansas at the request of Abolition friends in the East, who were furnishing funds for the cause. ^Vll the prepai'ations for and the attack on Hai'per's Ferry are a matter of national and not local history. Suffice it to say that on July 3, 1859, he hired a farm near Haiper's Ferry, called the Kennedy Place, and assumed the name of Isaac Smith and began to ship in the arms he had collected. - He succeeded in concealing his little band about this farm until he was ready to strike. Early on the morning of October 16, 1859, the blow fell. With his little band of twenty-two followers he seized the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry. On October 17 he was attacked, by United States forces, most of his followers were killed and he, himself, was wounded and made prisoner. He was put on trial October 26, charged with treason, conspiracy and murder, was found guilty on November 2 and executed by hanging on the gallows on December 2, 1859. His body was delivered to his wife at Harper's Ferry and by her taken to North Elba, where he was buried. Wendell Phillips preached the funeral sermon.

All the North looked upon John Brown as a martyr. As Christ had died to make men holy, this man had died to make them free. The Summit County boy had awakened the conscience of the Nation. It is difficult to realize that the bright-eyed little fellow, playing with his Indian mate? and tending his father's sheep up at Hudson, had become the central figure of our national life for the few years preceding the fall of Sumter. He did more; he had compelled the attention of the whole world. Victor Hugo published a sketch of him in Paris in 1861, which contained Hugo's own drawing of John Brown on the gallows, and which he marked Pro Chrisfo sicut Christus - he died for Christ in Christ's own manner. Biographies of him were published in England, Germany and other European countries. Emerson, Thoreau, Wendell Phillips, Thoanas Wentworth Higginson and other philosophers, poets and statesmen were proud to acknowledge their friendship with the latest martyr to the cause of Eternal Freedom.

Edward Roavland Sill And Repeesentative Citizens

public display of her mourning. Business was entirely suspended, flags were at halfmast, bells were tolled, and in the evening memorial services were held, at which prominent citizens made addresses. He was Summit County's first, but not her last, martyr to the cause of Human Freedom ; he was only the leader of a mighty company of noble men who made willing sacrifices of their lives for the cause of their Country and Humanity. Victor Hugo was right.

Edward Rowland Sill

Year by year the fame of this true poet is growing. It will be only a little while in the future until he is given the rank he deserves - among the foremost of America's poets. In many of his poems he attained the highest level of American art. In many respects his career offers a striking parallel to that of John Brown. He was born in the village of Windsor, Connecticut, April 29, 1841. This village was not far from John Brown's birthplace, and had been founded by a colony of Puritans, of whom John Brown's ancestors had been an influential part. He was not born to the poverty that was John Brown's lot. His family were well-to-do, and he received a splendid education at Yale College, from which he was graduated with the class of 1861. On the 9th of December of that year he sailed for California and landed in San Francisco March 25, 1862. The long sea voyage restored his health, which was impaired upon his graduation. His first position was that of clerk in the postoffice at Sacramento. He kept the position only a short time, going to Folsom, California, to accept a place as clerk in a bank. In July, 1862, he had determined fully to study law and enter upon that profession. He was then much disturbed as to the end toward which his life's activities should be directed. He writes "as Kingsley puts it, we are set down before that greatest world-problem - 'Given Self, to find God.' " In 1864 he determined to enter the ministry, and by February, 1865, he was deep in his theological reading. During these early days in California he wrote much - both prose and poetry. Early in 1867 he returned to the East and entered the Divinity School of Hai-vard University, where he studied for a few months. Why he quit the divinity school and relinquished the hope of the ministry he tells in a little autobiographical letter ^\Titten March 29, 1883, as follows: "At last I went to a Theological Seminary (in Cambridge, because there you did not have to subscribe to a creed, definitely, on the start), and thought I would try the preliminary steps, anywaj', toward the ministry. But here I finally found I did not believe in the things to be preached, as churches went, as historical facts. So I desperately tried teaching." In June, 1867, he returned to Cuyahoga Falls, fully determined not to return to his theological studies. He says in a letter: "There could be no pulpit for me. * * * It is no sentimentalism with me - it is simply a solemn conviction that a man must speak the truth as fast and as far as he knows it. - truth to him. * * * Emerson could not preach, and now I understand why." He then determined upon school teaching as his life work - a singularly happy choice. "School teaching always has stood first," he wrote, significantly, at this time. He began by teaching the district school at Wadsworth, Ohio. In September, 1869, he assumed the position of principal of the High School at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, to which he had been appointed during that summer. His predecessor in that position was Vergil P. Kline, well known later to the people of Northern Ohio. The memories of his happy days in California were drawing him thither. He secured a position in the High School at Oakland, California, in 1871. In 1867, he was married to his cousin. Elizabeth Newberrv' Sill, of Cuyahoga Falls, daughter of Hon. Elisha Noyes Sill and Elizabeth (Newberry) Sill. No children were born to them. In 1871 he resigned his position as principal of the Cuyahoga Falls High School and, with his wife, moved to California to accept the new teaching po-sition in Oakland. In 1874 he was oflFered and accepted the chair of English Literature in the Univcrsitv of

California, where he taught successfully until 1882. His health, which had never been very rugged, failed him entirely in this year. In 1883, he returned to Cuyahoga Falls, where he died February 27, 1887. His life work was teaching, but he will be known in the years to come because of his verse. Most of it ranks very high. The critics have compared him with Emerson, Arnold and Tennyson. His first volume of poems was published in 1868, and was entitled "The Hermitage and Other Poems." In 1883 his second volume, "The Venus of Milo and Other Poems," was privately printed at Berkeley, California. In 1887 Houghton, Mifflin & Company issued "Poems of Edward Rowland Sill"; in 1889 "The Hermitage and Later Poems," and in 1900, "Hermione and Other Poems." In 1900 these publishers also issued the "Prose of Edward Rowland Sill" and a splendid edition de luxe of his complete poems.