Events--

John Brown Day in Lake Placid, May 10

Margaret Washington, author of
Sojourner Truth's America

John Brown Day 2014 is scheduled for Saturday, May 10, from 2 to 4 p.m.  Events will take place at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid.  Special features include the lecture, "Women and Abolition," by Dr. Margaret Washington of Cornell University. Washington is a leading authority on the abolitionist movement, and the foremost biographer of Sojourner Truth.  Also featured is Dr. Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz [see below], who will lecture on the women in John Brown's family. Admission is free.

Biographer of Brown Family Women to Speak at Lake Placid

Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz

Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz, author of  The Ties That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism, was interviewed by Robin Caudell of the Plattsburgh, N.Y. Press-Republican, in regard to her scheduled lecture in Lake Placid for John Brown Day 2014.  “There are a lot of new books on John Brown that always mention the women in his family in passing,” she said.  “You can teach classes about him but the question is what was it like to live with this guy? I have just long been interested in the antislavery movement in the 1830s and 1840s and how they were trying to live out their radical beliefs about racial equality.”

Caudell writes that Laughlin-Schultz tracked the Brown women across the country, from coast to coast, and found one of her important sources the papers of the late Edwin N. Cotter, now held at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.  “There were a lot of archives to cover,” she said.  Laughlin-Schultz did not end her study at the hanging of Brown in 1859, but continued to trace the lives of Mary Brown and her daughter Anne, long afterward.  Mary Brown and some of her family migrated westward during the Civil War, and the abolitionist's widow died on the west coast as did several of the Brown's adult children.  "Their lives forever were affected by their relation to him, in good ways and bad.”

See Robin Caudell, "The Women Behind John Brown," Press-Republican [Plattsburgh, NY], 1 May 2014

Brown and Tubman Descendants to Speak at
Peterboro, June 14 & 15

Among the events scheduled for the upcoming Civil War Weekend in Peterboro, N.Y., Brown students should note that Alice Keesey Mecoy, great-great-great-granddaughter of the abolitionist will speak at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro. Also featured will be the great-great-grandniece of Harriet Tubman, who will be reading about her Great Aunt's historic role during the Civil War.  The lectures will be presented twice, on Saturday and Sunday, June 14 & 15, at 11:00 a.m.

An entire program of Civil War remembrance is scheduled for both days, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
 
To learn more about this event and the National Abolition Hall of Fame, click on this link.