Owen Brown is buried on Little Round Top, where he and his brother Jason lived on nearby land they homesteaded in the 1880s. He was the last survivor of the 1859 raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, led by his father, abolitionist John Brown, who hoped to spark an insurrection to end American slavery. Ten raiders, including two of Owen's brothers, were killed in action, and John Brown was among seven captured, tried, and hanged for treason, while Owen escaped with four others. In the Civil War that followed, “John Brown’s body lies a moulderin’ in the grave, but his soul goes marching on” was sung as the Union’s anthem. Owen and Jason carved paths into the mountains that remain to this day and received many visitors, as their family was closely associated with the end of slavery alongside friends Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. After living more than 20 years as a fugitive for his role in the Harpers Ferry raid, Owen Brown, Jason, their sister Ruth, and her husband Henry Thompson moved to Pasadena, a community founded shortly after the Civil War by Union Army veterans and supporters, many of them abolitionists who shared the Browns’ progressive and temperance-minded beliefs. Admirers including locals, visiting Union veterans, and former slaves and their descendants trekked to Owen’s remote cabin to shake his hand. When Owen died of pneumonia in January 1889, 2,000 people attended his funeral, and nine years after a simple wood tablet first marked his grave, it was replaced by the granite stone that has marked the gravesite ever since.
