CHAPTER VI. (CONT'D)

JOHN BROWN.

Sometime during the winter of 1857, old John Brown, of Kansas fame, accompanied by two of his sons and one white man, stopped all night with D. A. Barnett, at the Grove City House, at Grove City (now the City Hotel, Atlantic). Brown and his party had in charge about eighteen runaway negroes, men, women, and children, whom they were taking on the "underground railroad" from Missouri to Canada. They had three mule teams, and all the male adults of the party were armed with Sharp's rifles and Colt's navy revolvers. After breakfast they took their leave and traveled eastward. No one but Mr. Barnett knew who they were until they had gone, or knew that any negroes were of the party. It was no uncommon thing during the years just preceding the War of the Rebellion, for runaway negroes to be helped across the county, on their secret march to freedom. One instance in this connection will bear relating. In the year 1859 a pair of runaway negro men were traced from Missouri to the vicinity of Lewis. A large reward was offered for the arrest of them. The sheriff of the county and the man who kept the ferry over the Nishnabotna, at Lewis, had been posted as to the runaways and were on the lookout for them. It was thought the negroes could not cross the river at any point for many miles north or south, but would have to cross at Lewis. Passengers on the ferry-boat were watched with unusual interest for many days. One beautiful Sabbath morning a farmer who resided on the west side of the farmer who resided on the west side of the 'Botna, drove down to the ferry, having with him in the wagon two ladies closely veiled. The farmer was apparently on his way to church, and the two ladies closely veiled were apparently female members of the family. The farmer was ferried to the east bank and drove to Lewis -- from there he drove on eastward to Adair county, and placed the two "veiled ladies," who were really the two negro men, safely at another "station" in Adair. The sheriff and the keeper of the ferry never knew what became of those negro men, and never knew that they crossed the ferry in open day.

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Transcribed by Deb Lightcap-Wagner, March, 2014 from:"History of Cass County, Together with Sketches of Its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens", published in 1884, Springfield, Ill: Continental Historical Co., pp. 281-282.