John Brown and Oberlin: Introduction

This exhibit highlights Oberlin's relationship with John Brown. John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, the son of Owen and Ruth Brown. The Brown family moved to Hudson, Ohio when John was five years old. Owen Brown served as a member of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute's Board of Trustees from 1835 to 1844. During 1840 and 1841 John Brown failed in an attempt to negotiate with the Oberlin Collegiate Institute to settle his family on land known as the Gerrit Smith-Oberlin Virginia lands. In 1856, Oberlin College students Samuel S. Burdett and Henry P. Kinney joined abolitionist Brown in the conflict over slavery in Kansas, where sectionalism was threatening the region. On October 16, 1859, Oberlinians John A. Copeland, Lewis Sheridan Leary, and Shields Green (a former slave and freedom seeker) participated in Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal. Leary died of a wound received in the raid, and Copeland and Green were hanged on December 16, 1859. A monument erected in 1860 to honor the three Oberlin men who lost their lives at Harpers Ferry can be found in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park on Vine Street in Oberlin.

Photo courtesy of Abe Frato, Oberlin College Class of 2026

The Harper's Ferry Monument was originally erected in 1865 in Westwood Cemetery and was moved in 1971 to Martin Luther King, Jr. Park on East Vine Street.

The inscriptions on the faces of the monument are as follows:

"These colored citizens of Oberlin, the heroic associates of the immortal John Brown, gave their lives for the slave. Et nunc servitudo etiam mortua est, laus deo.

S. Green died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 23 years.
J. A. Copeland died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 25 years.
L. S. Leary died at Harper's Ferry, Va., Oct 20, 1859, age 24 years."

"This bust of the abolitionist John Brown was carved by the French sculptor Joseph-Charles de Blezer in 1870. College Trustee John Stern '39 purchased the bust in Paris in 1976 and loaned it to the College. It remained in storage until historian Geoffrey Blodgett '53 received it as a gift from Mr. Stern and displayed it in his Rice Hall office for 20 years. In 1999 College Archivist Roland Baumann accepted the bust for the College Archives for public viewing to celebrate Oberlin's strong anti-slavery holdings and heritage."

Geoffrey Blodgett to Roland Baumann,
December 23, 1999