Living as I do in the past, it seems only natural that certain facets of local history should make a particular impression and inspire further inquiry on my part. One such facet was underscored just recently when a class from De Anza College came to the Saratoga Historical Museum for a briefing on what this town was like back in the 1880s when Mary Ann Brown, widow of John Brown of Harpers Ferry, came here with several family members. I made a pass at giving them some background on this era.

Class members with their instructor, Jean Libby, made a special point of visiting Madronia Cemetery, where Mrs. Brown is buried along with various children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and in-law descendants. In talking to class members about Saratoga of the 1880s, I realized how little I remembered about the story of the Brown family itself, even though a superficial knowledge came just with growing up in the town.

Everybody knew about "John Brown's Lodge," a unique dwelling on the crest of the hill a couple of miles up Bohlman Road. In my younger years, I used to hike up there almost every Sunday afternoon to walk the family dog. The "lodge" name was a complete misnomer. John Brown was never there, and the latter-day house completely obscured the remnants of the little cottage inhabited by the widow Brown for two years until 1883.

And what did we in Saratoga learn about John Brown himself, much less his widow and children? Not much, outside of school textbooks. History has John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., reportedly with the intent of seizing arms for a slave uprising, as one of the flash points igniting the Civil War. That war was a fulcrum of American history, and I'd rank the slavery issue right up there with independence itself in charting the nation's development.

Brown, of course, was an icon of the abolitionists, those who sought to destroy the practice of slavery. Equally intense were those who defended slavery and the right of states to choose whether it should be allowed within their borders. In Saratoga, there were citizens of both persuasions.

A word about Brown himself. He was born in 1800 and followed various agricultural pursuits. Early on he became concerned with the slavery issue, and his participation in a bloody encounter in Kansas—then a focal point in the slave versus free state struggle—earned him the sobriquet "Osawatomie Brown." He was active in other efforts to free slaves, and in October 1859 he launched the Harpers Ferry raid (trivia note: the apostrophe in Harpers Ferry came later). Two of Brown's sons were killed in that raid, and Brown was executed less than two months later.

Brown had two wives and 20 children. Seven were by his first wife, Dianthe Lusk Brown, who died in 1832. The following year, the 33-year-old Brown married Mary Ann Day, who was 17. She bore him 13 children. There is a fascinating story concerning the family's migration west after Brown's execution in 1859. Fortunately, much of this has been preserved in a book, The Browns of Madronia, published in 1996 by Damon G. Nalty, a San Josˇ State University professor, now deceased, who did an amazing amount of research. That book, and one titled After Harpers Ferry, assembled by Saratoga historian Florence Cunningham and published by the historical foundation in 1964, give vivid accounts of the Brown family members in Saratoga. Both are available at the historical museum. I will quote one of those passages here and take up others in a later column.

In April 1881, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter visited Mrs. Brown at her mountaintop home and asked her, among other questions, about her husband's character and temperament. Her reply, in part:

"He was anything but a fanatic. He was a clear-headed, sober-minded man in business and was no less sober-minded, if more pertinacious, in his views on slavery. He abhorred the institution as a menace to the Union and for its own wrongs against humanity. He did what I suppose everyone now admits was necessary to do, and did it on principles he had held almost since boyhood ... "

DISCLAIMER: In my last column, reference was made to "Saratoga National Historical Park." The word "National" was not my doing.