Two Photographs of John Brown’s Sons Owen and Jason Outside Their Cabins in the San Gabriel Mountains

Los Angeles, California, 1880. Two photographs measuring approximately 4 ½ x 7 ½ inches. Pasadena Historical Society stamps verso. One with manuscript caption verso including “Mtn Home of John Brown’s Sons Located just south of Brown’s Peak between Millards Cañon + arroyo seco”. Wrinkling and marginal tearing with some missing corners. One photograph with tape residue. Very good.. Owen Brown (1824–1889) and Jason Brown (1823–1912) were two of abolitionist John Brown’s twenty children. Owen Brown participated in both the Pottawatomie massacre and the Harpers Ferry raid. Following the unsuccessful raid, he led the party of escapees to Pennsylvania. He lived in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, until 1885, when he joined his brother Jason—who was not involved in his father’s activities—in Pasadena. The two lived in poverty in mountain cabins several miles outside the city; offered here are two photographs of the brothers standing outside their cabins. In their time in Pasadena, they were described as eccentric and hermetic, but were liked and respected by those in town. Several obituaries of Owen Brown describe how, witnessing the growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the region, the brothers hired two Chinese men from the area to work for them “for the sake of the principle, although they had no need” of the workers.[1] One of these laborers may be the third man standing behind Jason Brown in the photograph where the brothers are astride donkeys.

Of interest to scholars of the Brown family and their legacy.

[1] “The Late Owen Brown. The Peculiar Life of the Son of the Abolitionist Ends in California.” Indianapolis Journal, January 13, 1889, 8.