John Brown's Body On The Bowery

After John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, for the raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, the radical abolitionist’s body was transported north in a crude box with the noose still around his neck. When Philadelphia rejected his widow’s effort to have the remains properly prepared there, the body was shipped to Manhattan under the escort of poet and abolitionist Theodore Tilton and arrived at 163 Bowery under cover of darkness on December 3. At the former undertakers McGraw and Taylor, Quaker undertaker Jacob Hopper prepared the body for burial, assisted by Charley Carpenter, sexton of St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery. After word leaked out, hundreds, including some of the city’s elite, came to view Brown’s body, dressed in a good suit and resting on ice. On December 5, placed in a simple but elegant coffin, his remains were sent home to Essex County.

New York, New York · United States