Transcriber's Note
Every effort has been made to replicate this text asfaithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and otherinconsistencies.
This address was delivered for the purpose of calling attention to thepresent condition of the marble monument erected at Stone Arabia,N.Y., to the memory of Colonel Brown in 1836, now insecure because thecemetery in the rear of Stone Arabia church is not properlymaintained.
The form of the address is slightly changed, but the writer will neverforget the kindness of the Canajoharie and Palatine friends whogreeted him and the wonderful beauty of Stone Arabia, a plateau northof the Mohawk at Palatine where our ancestors maintained a strongoutpost against Indians and other adversaries.
John Brown, of Pittsfield, Mass., now almost forgotten, was a patriotin our Revolution of 1775 whose career has been described more thanonce by men in New York and in Berkshire County, but, as it is nowtime to give more impartial views of the controversy, perhaps anothersketch of the life of this leader may encourage others to search forclearer views of the ways by which our ancestors established theinstitutions which we hope are to endure.
Daniel Brown, the father of Colonel John Brown, came from Haverhill,Mass., to the western part of the Commonwealth in 1752, when his sonJohn was eight years old. He seems to have been first in the beautifultown of Sandisfield to take part in its local government, both secularand ecclesiastical. "Deacon Brown" is called prosperous when this newtown on the banks of the Farmington River, east of the hills of theHousatonic, bade fair to equal Pittsfield as a trading-place. "TheDeacon" was a local magistrate under the king, when laymen served asjudges. John, his youngest son, is described as tall and powerful, anathlete able to kick a football over the elm-tree on the college greenat New Haven when he entered at twenty-three years of age, older inyears than most college students of the year 1767.
It is believed that he prepared for college with some citizen of theneighborhood, and it is known that he married before graduating in1771.
While at New Haven, he was fully informed of the peculiarities ofBenedict Arnold, then a storekeeper, already disgraced in the eyes ofrespectable citizens because of his desertion from the British armyand his reckless disregard for the rights of his creditors; for thenthe debtor was not allowed to retain his respectability, if he faileddishonestly. Furthermore, his self-assertion was recognized as toooften a display of arrogance and vanity. Brown's sister Elizabeth hadmarried Oliver Arnold, attorney-general of Rhode Island, a cousin of[Pg 2]Benedict, and it is reasonable to suppose that he was well informed ofArnold's misdeeds, which thus became known to John Brown.
In 1771, when he was graduated from Yale, only twenty men