A Piece of John Brown in Stamford NY

A Piece of John Brown in Stamford

By Karen Cuccinello, Stamford Village Library Historian

Every few months I take another look at ephemera (a neat word that means items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed that usually only have short-term usefulness) items in the history room library to see if I can figure out their relevance to Stamford. One of these unusual items is an envelope with a picture of John Brown’s sons, article about them and a facsimile of John Brown’s last letter to his sisters Mary and Martha. Last week I found a photograph of one of John’s grandchildren and figured there must be some reason these collectibles are in our library. So I put the two batches of goodies together and found the name of the contributor.

Yes, this is the same John Brown from the pre-Civil War times and song; “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on”. He was born in CT May 1800 and was hung in VA December 2, 1859 because of his raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in Virginia October 1859. John felt you had to physically fight to overthrow slavery and he recruited his sons and others to fight along his side.

John moved around a fair amount including a homestead in North Elba, NY, which is where he is buried. He had two wives who gave birth to 20 children, 11 lived to adulthood.

Jason and Owen Brown were born in 1823 and 1824 in Hudson, OH. Owen, who died 1889 in CA was the last surviving member of the Harpers Ferry raiding party. More information posted on findagrave.com

As hand-written on the envelope, the Brown letter and photo were in the possession of Ruth (Brown) Thompson of CA (daughter of John Brown), then handed down to Grace (Thompson) Simmons of CA, then across the country they came to Caroline (Lamport) Simmons and daughter Eliza of Hobart, next to Harriet “Hattie” (Simmons) Hanford of Hobart and finally given to the Stamford Village Library by Anna Belle (Mrs. Marshall “M.K.”) (Hanford) Mayes of Hobart.

After researching the name Mayer, as that is what the handwriting made it look like, for over an hour, I figured out the name was Mayes.

Marshall Mayes (1880-1972) opened a meat market in Hobart about 1918, married Annabelle Hanford December 1924 (no children came of this union, that I could find) and he had one daughter, Clara, by a first marriage.

Annabelle died December 30, 1984 age 98 and is buried in Locust Hill Cemetery in Hobart. She probably gave the Brown treasures to the library because she had no immediate family to hand it down to.