Peoria County, Illinois Genealogy Trails
Photos by Carole Martin ©2009

Hiram Brown

Pioneer Abolitionists- Persecuted for Remembering Those in Bonds As Bound With Them.

Death of Hiram Brown, A Friend of Garrison, At the Age of 95
Special to the Republic

Peoria, IL, Oct. 20. - At Elmwood today Hiram Brown, Sr., born Oct. 24, 1797, breathed his last
He was born in Cheshire, Mass., but lived a great portion of his life in Cummington, the home of William Cullen or Cullen Bryant. A very early
Abolitionist, his house was the stopping place for Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Foster and other when they passed through that part of the State.
He came to Illinois after the war and lived quietly, passing away as a flower fades.
The Republic, St. Louis, MO., Wed. Morning, Oct. 21, 1891, transcribed by Candi  H -209
 

CUMMINGTON'S OLD ABOLITIONIST
HIRAM BROWN AND FREE SPEECH

How the Anti- Slavery Folk Were Treated in the Hampshire Mountains
These Years Before the War "Decoration Days" in the Illinois City Where Hiram and Edwin Brown Died
Written by Clemmentina Dawes Namer for the Sunday Republican
Springfield Sunday Republican, May 30, 1897 pg. 15 Transcribed by Candi H.- 2009
This article was ruff in some spots. ?? means can't read.
 

It is long, long way from Arcadia to Illinois and the scenes of nature amid the frowning hills are very different from those that greet us on the rolling
prairie land. But yet, there is a connection between the little city of Elmwood in the Middle West and the Aracdian hills, - a connection as interesting to trace,
perhaps, as is the varied path by which one thought leads to another for remote in its bearing.

Hiram Brown lived in Aracdia years ago. " Greylock of greylock," for he was born and reared under the shadow of that mountain's brow. But in
fortune's stress he came to Aracdia and settled there with his family of boys and girls, and strove against many odds to rear and educate them, giving
them meanwhile the best of object lessons in his own uprightness and honesty.

There was another man, Stafford by name, who lived in Aracdia then, and he heard something of the anti-slavery agitation, and so brought about the first
meeting in that town of a series of meetings held in the interest of that cause. Hiram Brown was an interested listener at this meeting, and of it and the
events which followed, a son who was a boy then writes as follows:-

"It was at that meeting that my father became interested in the cause and ever afterward "took an active part. I cannot now remember who the speaker
was with her, but Lucy Stone was the main speaker (another tells me that Samuel May was also present) and I just remember the knit jacket she wore
that looked something like a man's coat and was mark of radicals.
"The first real development was when my father introduced in the annual church meeting a resolution to the effect that it was wrong to commune with
slaveholders. He had been deacon and was at that time leader in the Bible class of the Sunday School. Father was an easy speaker, who carried the
audience with him, and as the resolution was a surprise it carried almost without opposition. but the chairman of the meeting had enjoyed the assistance
of the relatives of one of the townspeople who were South Carolina ministers and who had spent summers there and had been slaveholders. So as
chairman he declined to declare the vote until the members had time to consider the effect of the resolution, and it was carried over until an adjourned
meeting. Then work on the members was commenced and it became an exciting contest. At the second time it was a tie vote, the chairman voting 1 the
negative and the vote was lost.
"It was then that father and mother and some others asked for letters of dismissal from the church and were excommunicated instead. Then the war
commenced in earnest. Some of the boys who had been my playmates would not speak to me on the street and father's shop, which had been a busy
place was deserted and he had to seek employment out of town, and being new to him it was a failure. he also made other attempts that did not succeed
and we had close times, but midst all we did our part toward the maintenance of the anti-slavery, anti- sectarian church, and by a dream we were able to
secure for our meeting the old Baptist church, then deserted. the deacon in whose care the key was left dreamed that he saw a skeleton tree, which all at
once began to grow and put out new limbs and twigs and become a monster tree. He applied this dream to the church and so anticipated the building of
the old church of his younger days. So he gave us the key and listened to one sermon by Rev. Mr. Stockman, an anti-slavery Wesleyan Methodist and
retired in disgust - but we had the key. Our church commenced with a small attendance of the poorer people and our antagonists dubbed it the "slop-
bowl" while we in turn called them "ironclads."
In the old Baptist church there gathered many enthusiastic spirits. there Wendell Phillips and Garrison, Parker, Pillsbury and the Fosters, Abby Kelly and
Samuel May and many others spoke amid ????-calls and jeers and flying missiles. The Hutchinson's sang the poems of Whittier, and other ringing songs,
set to the old hymn tunes by Edwin Brown, who himself aided in the chorus. And Hiram Brown and Frances Dawes (another of the stanch workers in
the cause and an officer of the underground railway) and Aunt Amanda and Uncle Rheuna, two of the finest, most picturesque figures of that day and
date and many others gathered, despite the sarcastic ridicule and in some cases persecution that fell upon them.
"I was the janitor, " continues our friend, then a boy in faded jeans, the "titman" of the family," and I built the fires and sawed the wood and the society
contained no more faithful worker than I, even if not much account. I circulated in every house every anti-slavery petition ( and they were not a few) for
10 years. I assisted my mother to church and sat with Grand-n  other Scott, that her Lucy might go; and I tramped over hills with C. C.
Burleigh to school-houses to help make an audience and on one occasion was one-third of the audience, but Burleigh never faltered and gave me a
valuable treat that paid us well. My sister K--- secured a school in Williamsburg and her salary was a help, but one of the "Ironclads" who was
acquainted in the town told them that she was a heretic and an infidel and she lost the school. For a few years we made every effort to exceed the
"Ironclads" in number and you have no idea of the joy it gave me when by actual count one of their number acknowledged that we stood 289 to their
260. But the western fever struck us hard; our congregation was more of a loving disposition and in one year we sent 50 missionaries (as Father termed
them) to the wild, wooly West. A continuation of a few years and the outbreak of the war left the church "without form and void." One of my jobs was
the canvassing of the surrounding hills for the sale of the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book gotten out by Mrs. Stowe, to refute statement that her
story of slavery was not true to life. It was a large paper-covered volume and sold for 50cents."

So Hiram Brown and his sons - who had done their best for the anti-slavery cause and in so doing had been factors in bringing about the great war
which followed-removed to the central part of Illinois to become home and ?inew of the prairie land, old settlers and fathers of the little city of Elmwood.
In Aracdia on Decoration day a sleepy and quiet peace holds away. Now and then along the shady roads there passes a party of veterans armed with
flags to make their annual visit to the burial places of comrades and before twilight falls, from ever soldier's grave there will float the stars and stripes.

Should they not also appear upon the graves of those who primary factors of the emancipation? Upon the grave of him who dared to speak his
convictions and to help on the slave amid peers and execrations, and upon the feeble woman who faced expulsion from the church for the cause of
rearing tall sons to support it? A massive stone of red Illinois granite marks her resting place and on its polished surface are these words: -
Has Stone transcription

 

His Motto " One World At A Time"

Pioneer Abolitionists- Persecuted for Remembering Those in Bonds As Bound With Them.
 

The scene is very different in Elmwood, where by the side of a similar stone, her husband and son are resting, these the connecting link between the two
far-divided places.

Elmwood lies in the midst of rolling prairies, covered with the most fertile and beautiful farms. One standing on the summit of the Mound, a rise of
ground which seems a mountain to these prairie folk, can gaze in every direction for many miles and in all that wide expense, there is not much waste
land to be seen, only long, wide fields, divided one from another with osage hedges and covered with corn, in such even rows, that in whatever direction
one looks, there is the shape of a star, its commuting point in the foreground.
Here and there a sycamore or giant cottonwood or willows appears itself. Honey ??eusis shade the next farm building and pastures honeysuckle clamber
over them. Its pastures that seem the meadows, the cows and colts grazing and many farming teams are at work in the fields. Down ?? the hollow is the
city of Elmwood, different from the usual western city, in as much as its streets are lined and shaded with beautiful elms, thus presenting a home feeling
to the easterner. On the edge of the town is the cemetery and close by its edge are the homes where Edwin and Hiram Brown passed their declining
years. Edwin Brown was the president and promoter of a bird protection society and allowed no gun to be there upon these grounds and so it was a
very carnival of ??? on that Decoration day of '94. Edwin Brown was sitting on the grassy slopes with us, the edge of Elmwood, and very like a sage
he looked with his long white hair and beard and bright kindly eye, gleaming underneath the overhanging brow. A cuckoo sang in the forest near, a turtle
dove in a robe of silvery gray peeped timidly from out of a tree and then flew quickly away to call coo, coo, from a giant sycamore, a red headed
woodpecker tapped the trees close by and a flock of blackbirds held earnest council in the apple-trees, while a tiny when wren built her house in the
very doorway and to us there came the scent of thousands of roses, on that Decoration day of '94.
In the distance a drum was beating by and by, slowly and solemnly, to the sound of funeral marches, came to veterans of the grand Army, followed by
the children carrying flowers and the people of the town. These seemed, in that quiet somber procession marching by it be an element of patriotism, of
the day, which perhaps are seldom met with.
Years ago an old war horse used to feed in the pasture near by and when on the day of days, he heard the drums and the sound of the bugle a spark of
his old spirit retuned and he came bounding to the hedge between the pasture and the road to greet the passing comrades with a seeming call of
recognition. For years he was tenderly cared for until too old to live without suffering, he was taken to the soldiers lot and given a soldiers burial.
Waiting with the birds and flowers we heard the volley of guns fired above the graves of the heroes dead and saw the returning comrades passing to
their homes.
Now Edwin Brown also lies by his father's side and the birds sing above them, while in the far-away Arcadian burying-ground the mountain breezes
blow and the pine trees sigh.
Of the four companies which this little Illinois city sent to southern battle-fields hardly one is left. To the memory of the many who were left in unknown
graves, to the few who sleep in the little cemetery and that other remnant who are left, the citizens of Elmwood gather every year to honor their deeds
and decorate their graves.

Below is a part of the poem written for one of these gatherings by Edwin R Brown-

 

Let the judge scatter flowers o'er the dead soldier's dust. Since he died that the court might be free to be just; Let the church scatter flowers with a reverent hand. And the soldier's grand faith by his works understand; Let the school scatter flowers with a chastened delight. For while swings her portal for black and for white; Let trade bring a wreath for the brave volunteer. For traffic no longer goes cringing in fear. Let Elmwood bring flowers and scatter them deep. O'er the sod where her brave boys so tranquility sleep; And tenderly let her remember to-day. That some of her sons sleep in graves far away. By river and bayou and steep mountain pass, In hot southern sands or in trackless morass. No processions of maidens goes scattering blooms. To-day on those humble and far away tombs, But their work's nobly finished and they fell. The blue sky bends o'er them, and the sunlight of heaven, Falls silently there like a *bealson given. Oh, think you their spirits still know the old faces. And still linger kindly about the old places? Ay, if live is still precious and honor most dear. The brave boys departed will meet with us here. Then wreaths for our soldier! The living we hail! With heart, hand, and voice; may their joys never fail. And the fallen we'll cling with the grip of a vice. To the freedom they bought at a heavy a price. Ay, we'll build them a monument, stately and fair, And the names of our fallen engrave deeply there. Yet though it should rival the tall shaft of gray. That on Bunker Hill catches the first gleam of day. A grander memento they've left you and me- A country redeemed, reunited and free! *Hard to read, what it looks like.

His Military Stone