as cheerily as though philanthropy had no concern with the project. The Gerrit Smith offer was not wholly a failure. It turned out some good Negro farmers, gave some of its best Negro citizens of to-day to northern New York, and trained a bishop of the British African Church. But it did far less than it might have done if better planned, and much if not all of its success was due to John Brown. He saw possibilities here both to shelter his family when he turned definitely to what was now his single object in life, and to train men to help him. He went to Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, N. Y., in April, 1818, and said: "I am something of a pioneer; I grew up among the woods and wild Indians of Ohio and am used to the climate and the way of life that your colony find so trying. I will take one of your farms myself, clear it up and plant it, and show my colored neighbors how such work should be done; will give them work as I have occasion, look after them in all needful ways and be a kind of father to them."[1]
His offer was gladly accepted and he moved his family there the following year. It was a wild, lonely place. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote once: "The Notch seems beyond the world, North Elba and its half-dozen houses are beyond the Notch, and there is a wilder little mountain road which rises beyond North Elba. But the house we seek is not even on that road, but behind it and beyond it; you ride a mile or two, then take down a pair
- ↑ Sanborn, p. 97.
