OLD JOHN BROWN - I

Just about everyone will recognize this picture as being a portrait of John Brown, the old abolitionist. And if you don't recognize that one, perhaps this one is tucked somewhere in your memory.


I think without knowing the full story of John Brown, if you based your opinion of him on either of the above pictures, you'd describe a crazy man. And there are plenty of historians who would probably say you are close to being right. Not his looks but his actions might also lead one to suspect he was afflicted with a major mental disorder of one type or another.

I'm sure somewhere in my schooling I had seen these pictures and just assumed that "John Brown" and "crazy as a hoot owl" were synonymous. But I have no recollection of being taught much about abolition in school other than its connection to the Underground Railroad. I was not interested in history and really didn't pay too much attention to it.

But in 1998 I read a review of Russell Banks' newly published book "Cloudsplitter" and knew that I needed to read this book. By that time I was a genealogist who had discovered that her family lived in Douglas County, Kansas, at exactly the same time that Brown and his band of antislavery terrorists were getting ready to commit their brutal guerrilla warfare on that county -- so of course I had to read the book. It is a historical novel but solidly built on facts. Banks has given the job of narrating the book to John Brown's youngest son, Owen. And Owen takes over 700 pages to tell the story. It is so fascinating I have already read it twice and intend to read it again.

In 2002 I found, at the UC Berkeley library a small manuscript in the Bancroft Collection written up after an 1888 interview with my great-grandfather Jim Dobbins when he was living in Colorado. In 1856 he had come with his family to Kansas from Illinois as an 18 year old and they had settled in Prairie city, fairly close to Osawatamie, where Brown and his group had their headquarters. Here's what the manuscript says:

He first came westward in 1856 and settled at Lawrence, Kansas, when he arrived just in time to witness the famous career of John Brown. Being of Republican parents, and adhering closely to their political beliefs, he soon became an earnest sympathizer with that party and afterwards a zealous and important factor in the support of their cause. As a follower of the Browns he was engaged in a number of skirmishes of a thrilling and interesting nature.

Unfortunately none of those skirmishes were reported, and until I turned up that document no one in the Dobbins family even knew that he was connected to John Brown in any way.

It was finding and reading this tiny little document that made me turn to "Cloudsplitter" for a second time. And it certainly has kept me interested in not only John Brown but also his family, especially Owen.

Now as to Brown's appearance, he did not always look like he is portrayed in those paintings. To do him justice, I think it is necessary to show how he really looked, without adding on all the accoutrements that suggest "demon," "possessed," "crazy" and those types of descriptors. I like to think that my great-grandpa, after living his entire life in the shadow of his Dobbins Grandfather, a well-educated Presbyperian Circuit-riding minister and staunch abolitionist active in the underground railway (and who had his tombstone engraved "Against Freemasonry and Slavery,") would naturally be drawn to an abolitionist cause, especially if headed by a normal-looking man.


Because my great-grandpa Jim Dobbins is not named in any of the records as one of Brown's guerrillas, I am convinced that those "skirmishes of a thrilling and interesting nature" were not conducted with swords and sabres!

To Be Continued.