Historical Treatment of John Brown's Family: a women's history

Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

Cornell University Press

Pub Date: Aug 6 2013  |  Archive Date: Jul 23 2013

The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism

This account focuses on the women of John Brown's family, his second wife Mary, daughters and daughters-in-law. Use of letters, newspaper accounts and works by Brown biographers tells a story of a family supporting a husband and father's abolitionist beliefs within a religious context. Brown and his family's antislavery work went beyond nominal support. The family lived for some time in a community of ex-slaves and worked to help escaped slaves find freedom. 

The women in Brown's life worked hard to bear the burdens of belief and to maintain a house and livelihoods. Brown, often absent, relied on other wealthy abolitionists' gifts and funds to continue his work and feed his family. Brown and his family were the arrow point of the abolitionists of the time. Brown took action while others only talked. The story related by Laughlin-Schultz's portrays the Brown women as strong, yet human characters that face tragic national and personal events. All Brown family members alive after the Civil War were forever intwined with the memory and actions of John Brown.

I recommend this book as a look inside the family of a man willing to take on the government and slaveholders to help free the slaves and raise them to a level of equality with their fellow Americans. The account is balanced and explains some of the thinking of the women. The family letters used to illustrate the lives of the Brown women show real life at the edge.