John Brown Heritage Association

Specific Need

The John Brown Heritage Association would appreciate donations to help fund operating and capital costs incurred in preserving, maintaining and interpreting the historic John Brown Tannery Site in New Richmond, Crawford County, Pennsylvania.

Donations will help the Association fund regular operating costs related to:

Mowing and beautifying the park-like grounds of the tannery site, which is on the National Register of Historic Places;
Making masonry repairs to the surviving stone foundation walls of the tannery that abolitionist John Brown built for his leather-making business;
Maintaining liability insurance to help the Association continue making the tannery site available for the public to visit without charge;
Printing and mailing the Association's annual newsletter;
Commercial service-provider hosting of the Association's website dedicated to the tannery and John Brown;
Obtaining needed supplies for displaying tannery artifacts and John Brown-related information at the Association's museum space in the Richmond Township Recreation Building;
Maintaining and adding to the Association's archives, consisting of organizational records as well as books, articles, photographs, and original research on John Brown's life and times locally and nationally.

Donations also will support a capital project to improve a recently gifted overgrown small vacant lot that adjoins the tannery site. Planned improvements are to continue landscaping the property so that it harmonizes aesthetically with the tannery site. The Association seeks to create and place on the property an interpretive "storyboard" to educate the public on early-19th century tanning as would have been practiced by John Brown.

Another special project is to seek expert evaluation, do repair stabilization and document the provenance of a long-barrel muzzle-loading rifle recently donated to the Association for planned public display. The musket reputedly was used in Crawford County on a shared basis by John Brown and by an early ancestor of the donor.

Mission

The John Brown Heritage Association is a small all-volunteer private nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve, maintain and interpret the historic John Brown Tannery Site in New Richmond, Crawford County, Pennsylvania.

The half-acre site contains the stone foundation ruins of a tannery that abolitionist John Brown built decades before he became famous for his 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in a daring but unsuccessful attempt to rally and liberate enslaved persons in the South. Although captured, tried and executed, Brown won respect and sympathy from many for his willingness to die for what he thought right. His martyrdom fueled antislavery sentiment in the North, alarmed slave-holding interests in the South, and drove America closer to the Civil War.

John Brown and his young family moved from their home in Ohio to Pennsylvania in 1826. Upon settling in present-day New Richmond, he cleared a farm, put up a cabin and barn (both gone now), and operated his tannery for processing animal hides into leather that he sold. A leader in his frontier community, he started a school and church, imported fine livestock, oversaw road upkeep, helped neighbors in need, and was postmaster and mail carrier over a 20-mile route. He grieved the death of his first wife and two of their children, and married again before relocating back to Ohio in 1835.

As trustee owner and caretaker of the tannery site, the John Brown Heritage Association seeks to keep alive the legacy of John Brown both as an enterprising pioneer figure in Crawford County history as well as the later abolitionist firebrand who helped spark the American Civil War and championed racial equality during his era.

Profile

The John Brown Heritage Association succeeded other volunteer-based groups that began preserving the tannery site in memory of John Brown as early as 1916. The Association strives to:

Perpetuate, maintain and improve the John Brown Tannery Site for the public to visit year round without charge. Enhancements have included repairs to the tannery ruins; landscaping; and a parking and entrance plaza.
Study, interpret and enlarge public understanding of John Brown's local and national historical significance. The Association has collected books, articles, research and other archives related to Brown and the tannery; hosted speakers; held commemorative events such as pilgrimages at the site; erected historical markers there; and given tours of the property to school students and other interested visiting groups.
Seek, acquire and publicly display Brown-related artifacts and documents. Among other things, the Association has assisted in archaeological excavations at the site and has an exhibit of tannery artifacts, photographs and John Brown-related information at the nearby Richmond Township Recreation Building.