On May 9th, 1800 a boy or a legend I should say named John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut. Brown was the second of Owen and Ruth Brown's sixteen children. The Browns thought of themselves as descendants of Peter Brown, who came over on the Mayflower. As a boy John and his family were very religious and extremely concerned with morals. When Brown was five years old Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the country by the single purchase of the huge Louisiana Territory from France. On his fifth birthday Brown and his family set off for Ohio. On John's journey to Ohio he learned pioneering skills, such as riding horses, driving the cows, helping the Browns" adopted helper, a boy twice his age. John became a young buckskin learning to make leather, therefore, he could dress the skins of deer, squirrels, raccoons, cats, wolves, and dogs. Brown was on his own at a young age. .
At the age of eight John's mother died, and once he reached the age to serve military duty, he paid fines as the Quakers did, to excuse himself from service. As time went on slavery was the most important question facing the nation. In 1820 John married Dianthe Lusk and had seven children. Shortly after that she died during childbirth in 1832. One year later Brown married teenager Mary Ann Day, who had a total of thirteen children. Only six lived to adulthood. .
John Brown initiated in Pennsylvania, where he was then living a project among sympathetic abolitionists to educate young blacks. The next twenty years of his life were largely dedicated to this and similar anti -slavery ventures. In 1855 he followed five of his sons to Kansas Territory, then a center of struggle between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. Under Brown's leadership his sons became active participants in the fight against pro-slavery terrorists from Missouri, whose activities led to the murder of a number of abolitionists at Lawrence, Kansas.
