Brown, Watson

Life Span
to
Full name
Watson Brown
Burial Place
North Elba, NY
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
1
Family
John Brown (father), Mary Ann Day Brown (mother), Isabella M. Thompson (wife)
Relation to Slavery
White non-slaveholder
Other Affiliations
Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)

Watson Brown (Villard, 1910)

Scholarship
Watson Brown, born at Franklin, Ohio, October 7, 1835, married Isabella M. Thompson in September, 1856, and died of his wounds at Harper’s Ferry on October 18, 1859. He was: “Tall and rather fair, with finely knit frame, athletic and active.” Of little education, he was a man of marked ability and sterling character, who bore well the family responsibilities which fell to him when all the other men of the clan went to Kansas. His son lived only to his fifth year; his widow later married her husband's cousin, Salmon Brown.
Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910), 686.

Watson Brown (Redpath, 1860)

Scholarship
WATSON BROWN, October 7, 1835, Franklin, Ohio; married Isabella M. Thompson, September, 1856; wounded at Harper's Ferry, October 17, while bearing a flag of truce; died October 19, 1859.
James Redpath, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 41.
Date Event
John Brown attacks Harpers Ferry
John Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry continues with the townspeople fighting back
John Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry ends when Marines storm the Engine House
John Brown and his surviving raiders are taken to Charlestown, Virginia under heavy guard
- John Brown and his fellow prisoners are held at Charlestown, Virginia pending trial
John Brown and his fellow prisoners are held at Charlestown pending trial before a Virginia court
Harpers Ferry Raid
Date Title
Carlisle (PA) American Volunteer, "Additional Particulars of the Insurrection," October 27, 1859
How to Cite This Page: "Brown, Watson," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/5227.