Growin’ up Brown: "There Was Never a Time I Didn't Know"
From childhood teasing to a band called Kansas, Marty Brown traces how she came to take her ancestor's history seriously
Marty Brown is a direct descendant of abolitionist John Brown through his son Jason Brown, making her a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of John and Dianthe Lusk Brown. In this conversation with Dr. Lou DeCaro, she reflects on growing up with a portrait of John Brown in an oval frame on the wall, likely a souvenir from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and on the split image she encountered in John Stewart Curry's mural "Tragic Prelude" at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
Marty discusses family conversations (and silences) about John Brown, the extended-family teasing that taught her early not to bring up her ancestry, and her great-uncle Ed (born 1908), who had living memories of Jason Brown walking from Akron to visit relatives near Cleveland before his death in 1912.
The conversation touches on a rarely examined dimension of abolitionist history: what it means to carry that legacy across generations.
Transcript
Marty was raised in a home with a portrait of John Brown on the wall and has spent most of her life trying to sort out John Brown's truth from the abundant fictions, myths, and lies. She grew up in Kansas City — coincidentally on the Kansas-Missouri border — and has spent most of her adult life in Portland, Oregon. She is particularly interested in the children of Dianthe Lusk Brown: how their lives were impacted by Kansas and Harpers Ferry, and what became of them and their families after the Civil War.
How Lou DeCaro and Marty First Connected (0:54)
LOU: Very quickly — I first met you after I wrote a piece on my blog way back in 2010. I had seen you on Antiques Roadshow, showing some of your Brown family materials. I posted about it, and then one of your friends reached out to me in early 2011 and said, if you want to get in contact — and that's how we first had our conversation. Lo these many years later, here we are. We want to welcome you, Marty. We're so glad to be able to share this time with you.
Let's start here: talk about growing up Brown. You had a picture of John Brown on your wall. Your family was proud of their Brown descent.
Two John Browns: The portrait on the wall and the Curry Mural in Topeka l (1:43)
MARTY: Oh, absolutely. I know it's different for other descendants. I believe Alice McCoy has spoken pretty poignantly about her family — she's a descendant of Annie — where it was not spoken of. I can't speak for any other descendants. I can only speak to my own experience.
For me, there was never a time when I didn't know I was a descendant of John Brown, and there was definitely a portrait on the wall. It was in an oval frame. It's the one where he's got the long beard, and it says "Fondly, John Brown." I think these were sold at the Chicago World's Fair as souvenirs. That's the one I grew up with.
But because I also grew up close to Kansas, from time to time we would visit the state house in Topeka. So I also grew up with John Stewart Curry's mural — "Tragic Prelude," or "Bleeding Kansas." It was a sort of split screen. Who is this man? Is he this gentle-looking man with the wool coat — very gentle and kind — or is he this crazed man with giant swords?
Family Conversations About John Brown (3:03)
LOU: Did your family have conversations about John Brown?
MARTY: Yes and no. Never any in-depth ones. The story I received from my family was very much the standard story. To boil it down to its essentials: John Brown started the Civil War and ended slavery. And he was always held up in my family as the example of one person making a difference if they really want to — which, honestly, if John Brown is your example, it can be a little demotivating. It's like, well, I might as well not even bother. I was a shy, retiring kind of kid.
It's an interesting legacy. It's complicated. Mostly it would come up in the extended family — my father's mother's side, people who weren't Brown descendants — and they would tease us, gently rib us about the Browns being crazy. I learned really young not to bring this up.
The Band Kansas and a New Curiosity (4:29)
When I was a teenager and the band Kansas came out with the picture of John Brown on the cover, that's really when I started to get interested and began doing my own thinking and exploration around it.
In my extended family, we also talked a fair amount about Jason and Owen — partly because there was still the property, the grave site. [I want to shout out to Michelle, Zach, and Marietta, who have done wonderful work restoring that grave site.]
One of my early memories is a family meeting about that grave site. My great-uncle had been paying the taxes on it for years. When Owen died, he and Jason had held joint title to it — but Owen died without any heirs. It was left to all of his relatives. By that point there were hundreds of people who could potentially claim a stake in it.
The decision was made to stop paying the taxes, let the property go for taxes, and assume someone would buy it. Of course, nobody ever did. It got sold for taxes and went into private ownership. The rest is history.
Great-Uncle Ed's Living Memories of Jason Brown (5:50)
That generation — Jason, Owen — comes alive a bit through my great-uncle Ed, who was born in 1908 and had living memories of Jason. He remembered Jason in Akron at the end of his life, walking from his home in Akron — where he was living with his son Charles — all the way to visit my great-grandfather in a suburb of Cleveland. He was a great walker and a wanderer, Jason.
LOU: He died in 1912.
MARTY: Yes. So this was at the very end of his life. My great-uncle had living memories of him, and I have living memories of my great-uncle. That's the closest I can get to the actual people.
And again, what I knew about John Brown was mostly the received story — what you get in your high school history book. Not a whole lot more than that.
