Atop an Altadena hill, named “Little Round Top” after the Battle of Gettysburg, lies the gravesite of Owen Brown, son of the abolitionist John Brown.
Recently, local officials got word that the site had been approved to become one of the few sites in the western United States to be accepted into the National Park Service’s “Network to Freedom Program,” which recognizes more than 800 locations in the U.S. and Canada with connections to the Underground Railroad.
“Just like the Civil Rights Movement, you think about it only taking place in the South,” explained Altadena Heritage member Michele Zach. “But it also took place in the West.”
In 1856, John Brown, along with other abolitionists and his son, abducted and killed five pro-slavery settlers in what’s known as the Pottawatomie massacre.
John Brown is perhaps most remembered for leading a rebellion of enslaved people in raiding an armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859, which is regarded by historians as one of several events that sparked the American Civil War. The raid was a failure — participants were executed, killed or sent to trial — but Owen managed to escape, living as a fugitive for 20 years.
His siblings all participated in their father’s abolitionist efforts, albeit to different extends. Of his seven siblings, Owen was the most active in these efforts.
In 1885, Owen joined his brother, sister, and brother-in-law in living in Pasadena in seeking refuge from the widely-held negative memory of their father. Pasadena was served as a safe space for Owen, as it was made up of settlers who mostly shared in the same values: pro-Union, pro-abolition, pro-temperance.
He retreated to a cabin with his brother, Jason, in the hills of Altadena.
“They wanted to create a legacy so that his father’s legacy would continue, because there was already this false narrative that was building after the Civil War, which grows with the myth of the south, that John Brown was crazy,” explained Zach. “I mean, you’ve got to be crazy to try to end slavery.”
In 1889, Owen died of pneumonia at the age of 64 in his sister Ruth’s home in Pasadena.
Revered almost as a celebrity in Pasadena, Owen’s funeral was met with at least 1,800 attendees. Nine years after his death, pallbearer Major H.N. Rust placed a gravestone on top of a hill in Altadena reading: “Owen Brown, Son of John Brown, the Liberator, died Jan. 9, 1889.”
Altadena Heritage, the advocacy organization dedicated to preserving the history of Altadena of which Zach has been the chairman of for 20 years, has been instrumental in protecting Owen Brown’s gravesite.
Currently, Altadena Heritage is working with the Pasadena Unified School District in creating a program to integrate this local history into their curriculum.
With the group’s The Owen Brown Gravesite Committee, where Zach also serves as the chairman, they worked to develop a film with Pablo Miralles about his life that could be shown in classrooms.
But they’ve also restored the gravesite, securing its placement in the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Just last year, after years of advocacy, it was declared as an Los Angeles County landmark.
Then, Zach met with a local historian named Kevin Waite, who had written about slavery and the American West. After discussing efforts to gain more historical recognition for the gravesite, Waite introduced Zach to someone at the National Park Service, whom she worked with for a year in writing its nomination for the Network to Freedom program.
Recently, Zach received the email that the Owen Brown Gravesite was accepted.
“Having this recognition… shows that it took so many people all working together to end slavery,” said Zach. “It’s not this group or that group — to make real progress we have to work together. And I think that the Browns are really emblematic of that.”