Page:The life and letters of John Brown (Sanborn).djvu/21

Rh oldest son, born Nov. 4, 1728. He married Hannah Owen, of Welsh descent, in 1758, whose father was Elijah Owen, of Windsor, and her first ancestor in this country John Owen, a Welshman who married in Windsor in 1650, just before young Peter Brown went thither from Duxbury. A few years afterward an Amsterdam tailor, Peter Miles or Mills, came to Connecticut from Holland, settled in Bloomfield near Windsor, and became the ancestor of John Brown's grandmother, Ruth Mills, of West Simsbury. Thus three streams of nationality—English, Welsh, and Dutch—united in New England to form the parentage of John Brown. His forefathers were mostly farmers, and among them was the proper New England proportion of ministers, deacons, squires, and captains. Both his grandfathers were officers in the Connecticut contingent to Washington's army, and one of them, Captain John Brown, died in the service. It is his gravestone which the pilgrim to his grandson's grave, in the Adirondac woods, sees standing by the great rock that marks the spot; and among the other inscriptions which there preserve the memory of his slaughtered descendants, that of the Revolutionary captain stands first.

Owen Brown,—"Squire Owen,"—son of this captain, and father of the Kansas captain, was named for his mother's