John Brown Jr. and the “Pirates” of Put in Bay

 Guest Post by Nathaniel R. Ricks

 HPLM Summer 2023Manuscripts Intern

 

In 1867, long before its heyday of partying, the village of Put in Bay on Lake Erie’s South Bass Island was just barely developing a knack for hosting tourists. Drawn to its War of 1812 connection, beautiful vistas, mild climate, easily accessible caves, and growing number of vintners, it became common in the postbellum period for individuals, families, and even large groups to visit the island for a day of merriment.  Several services began offering regular excursions to Put in Bay when the lake wasn’t too stormy to navigate.  On September 4, 1867, for example, a large group from the Cleveland Fire Department made the trip on the steamer Ironsides.  Unfortunately, sharing their boat that Wednesday was “a gang of roughs and bullies,” wrote island resident John Brown, Jr., the kind of people in his experience “who attach themselves more or less to all excursion parties.”  In a letter to his sister-in-law Isabelle Thompson Brown, John described the “sacking” of Put in Bay 

After touring one of the island caves, the ruffians “called at the School house and used insulting and obscene language to the teacher and on leaving threw several stones against the school house.”  They then “vented their passion” on the church building, as The Sandusky Register phrased it a few days later, “by breaking windows and stoning the building.” Brown also reported that they broke several lights at the church and “stripped Mrs. Fry’s peach trees,” which would have been in full fruit in early September. 

Upon arriving back at the docks, the bandits stumbled upon Salmon Brown fairly alone, watching some melons that Lemuel “Lem” Brown, had prepared to sell to tourists.  While keeping one eye on the melons, Salmon was getting ready to lead a few other gentlemen on a quick boat tour of the area when “ten or a dozen of these roughs came along and jumped into the boat attempting to control it entirely.” When Salmon protested, “Some others of the gang then pitched Salmon off the Dock into the Lake.”  In blow-by-blow detail, John described for his sister-in-law the brawl that ensued, a brawl that would leave him with a grave injury:

Salmon got into the boat as soon as he could and threw the line to have some one make fast, when he was Knocked down into the boat and beaten.  By this time Lem. came to the boat from the shore through the water and ordered the scamps out of the boat:  upon this, they set upon him, clinched him, struck and kicked him. – he finally broke away and seizing an oar gave them a number of good strokes when one of their number came into the water behind him and Knocked him down and held him under the water while the mob around shouted “kill him! drown him!”  Up to this time I was at the Hotel reading a newspaper; noticing a rush at the door I looked out and saw the melons flying from the Dock, and judging that Salmon or Lemuel were in trouble I ran down to where the crowd was when I saw Lemuel and a man apparently much larger struggling in the water at about waist deep, Lem appearing to have the worst of it as he was frequently put under the water, the crowd yelling “drown him!”  I went in immediately to where they were and seized by the nape of his neck the fellow who was holding Lem under.  I gave him such a jerk as made him let go pretty quick when he turned on me striking at and endeavoring to clinch me, but I had such a hold that his shirt collar became too tight and I shortly had him on his back and under water and commenced towing him ashore.  When I had dragged him to within 8 or 10 feet of the shore some one from the crowd threw a heavy stone hitting me in the face.  My next remembrance is, that some persons were aiding me up the bank.  It seems that I fell back into the water, and the general word was that I was killed.  This alarmed the mob and they at once hurried aboard their Boat.  I was the worst hurt of any:  the left nostril of my nose the lower part was cut off, barely hanging to my face, a shocking gash extending back to the bones of my face.  I was assisted at once to the Hotel, & Dr Elder sewed up the wound, fastening it also with adhesive straps.  It has now entirely healed externally and I have yet a tolerable nose left.  There will always remain a scar, shall not otherwise be much disfigured – Am exceedingly thankful it is no worse.  Had the stone hit me in the eye, fairly on the bridge of the nose instead of the side, or on the head the result would have been far different.  Such a blow on the skull would in all probability have killed me.  Salmon was severely beaten with fists about the head and face.  Lemuel the same, and in addition had a severe cut with some sharp instrument on the elbow.  My coat was cut through with a knife, on the shoulder  I think it was done when the fellow let go his hold of Lemuel and struck at me.  Salmon was bitten on his cheek by the man who Knocked him down in the boat.  We are now pretty well recovered.  The bones of my face are yet a good deal painful indicating a disturbance there which is not yet settled.  A number of my teeth were loosened but they have become quite firm again.  If the bones of my face get well without any piece coming out I shall every reason to feel thankful.

A Portion of John Brown Jr.'s Letter to his sister-in-law
John Brown Jr. Papers
Charles E. Frohman Collection
Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

While the attackers escaped initially, within a few more days the main “ringleaders” had been rounded up on charges of attempted murder.  John Brown did, indeed, suffer the worst of the injuries sustained that day, and by November he had deteriorated to necessitate institutionalization for two months at the Northern Ohio Lunatic Asylum in Newburg, Ohio. His symptoms included uncharacteristically violent outbursts and mood swings, continuing headaches, panic attacks, lapses in attention, and “a sort of mental stupor,” he told his sister-in-law in later letters, “which has unfitted me for writing at all.” He experienced “flashes” of pain, “up along the left side of my brain much as a great light seemed to flash up when that stone struck me.”  It seems likely that he suffered what we would call today post-concussion syndrome following a mild traumatic brain injury from the blow to his face.  Exacerbated by exhaustion from tending to both the Fall grape crop and the injured  Lemuel Brown, who broke a leg during the harvest, John’s mental deterioration in the fall of 1867 seems unsurprising. 

After his stay in the asylum, John made a full recovery of his mental faculties, enduring at most a "dizzy feeling at times, with a tendency to faint." He also experienced a great deal of lingering anxiety, anticipating the attackers' May 1868 trial, which he did not want to attend, but was subpoenaed.  He avoided writing about the incident after returning home, preferring to move on from the problem with the "pirates."   Rather he focused on proving to his family and friends that he was firmly rooted in sanity once again.

              

                    

John Brown Jr
John Brown Jr Papers
Charles E. Frohman Collection
Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

 John Brown, Jr.’s account of the “brawl” and descriptions of his condition can be found in his letters to Isabelle Thompson Brown (“My dear Sister Belle,” ) dated September 6, 1867; December 8, 1867; December 25, 1867; and April 26, 1868, all contained in the John Brown Jr. papers, part of the Charles E. Frohman Collection at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums.  Learn more about Brown’s history and his collected letters at our website: 

Alice M. Bowen of South Bass Island:

Alice M. Bowen

Dr. Thomas Huxley Langlois Collection

The above photograph is a reprint of an original copied by and found in the Dr.Thomas Huxley Langlois Collection at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. Alice M. Bowen was identified as the daughter of Amassa Bowen, a farmer who had migrated from New York to Howell, Michigan where Alice was born in1853. According to notes by Dr. Langlois, Alice Bowen was a nurse suffering from tuberculosis, who came to South Bass Island from Detroit, Michigan. 

She purchased land on the island and built a retreat for nurses known as "The Shingles." Her project failed. But Ms. Bowen remained on the island, continuing to buy and sell a succession of lots. Little is known about her life on South Bass Island. She is believed to have died there in 1921.






 

Jack Day's Bay View Hotel

Jack Day

Like so many before and after, John “Jack” Day, Jr. came to South Bass Island never intending to stay, but he soon made it his home. His father, John, Sr., was the son of Irish immigrants. He worked as a builder and contractor near Poughkeepsie, New York. Eventually, the Day family settled in Detroit, where Jack learned to build organs. But in 1887, at the age of 20, Jack came with his father to South Bass Island to work on the new town hall. When the hall was finished, Jack stayed on to manage a restaurant and later the Oak Point House. He helped with the construction of the Victory Hotel and leased the Gibbons property before moving to Ballast Island. There, for seven years, Day managed a club.

 

Jack Day's Bay View Hotel



Jack was persuaded to return to South Bass Island and purchase the Gibbons property that he had leased earlier. There were 5 acres of fruit trees and a 15-room house on the property. Day soon moved the structure forward on the lot and added a third floor, verandahs, and an “outside dining room.” Jack Day’s Bay View Hotel grew to 50 rooms. Like other South Bass Island hotels, it became a respite for city dwellers hoping to escape the summer heat and ever-present smoke and dirt.

Jack Day's Barns

Day’s careful management brought hundreds of vacationers back to Bay View year after year. It became a focal point for many Lake Erie yacht gatherings. According to the “History of Northwest Ohio,” Day credited much of his success to his wife, May Belle Millen of Norwalk. In addition to their hotel business, the Days raised Mildred Welch, who later married Bernard McCann.

Jack took part in Put-in-Bay’s civic life. He served as chairman of the park board and street commission, on the town council and school board, and as mayor for several terms. After his wife’s death, he continued to manage the Bay View with the help of a cook, and in his later years, the Jack Day Tourist Home. In the spring of 1958, Jack fell ill shortly after returning from Florida. He was flown to the mainland, where he passed away a short time later at Magruder Hospital. Jack Day, 91 years old, was buried at Maple Leaf Cemetery on the island he had loved for a lifetime.



George Gascoyne: Island Contractor

George Gascoyne surrounded by his wife Mary, relatives, and his Dog "Watch"

Dr. Thomas Langlois Collection

Like many others, George Gascoyne came to South Bass Island perhaps never intending to stay. George had grown up in New Providence, New Jersey, the son of a farmer who had emigrated from England.  At the age of 18, he enlisted in the 26th New Jersey Infantry, experiencing the horrors of the Civil War at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Maryes Heights. After the war, the 25-year-old Gascoyne accepted contracts to build the Beebe House and the first Put-in-Bay House. When the job was done, Gascoyne stayed on, making the island his home for the remainder of his long life.

An ambitious, creative individual, he served for a time as a Put-in-Bay councilman, island postmaster and the village’s first fire chief and funeral director. He owned and operated a livery service as well as a vineyard behind Perry’s Cave. He performed in island theatricals and enjoyed his whiskey and his gamecocks.   

But it was truly his skill and talent as a building contractor that set him apart. Gascoyne built the U.S. Fish Hatchery, the Oak Point House, and the Town Hall, one of the few brick buildings then on the island. Around 1875, dock master and storekeeper Clinton Idlor hired Gascoyne to build his new home. Featuring Italianate architecture, the Idlor House was considered one of the island’s finest homes. Perhaps Gascoyne’s masterpiece was the home he built in 1875 for railroad magnate James Monroe.  Designed by a Toledo architect, “Inselruhe” (meaning “island rest” in German) features a broad verandah, a corner tower, and long narrow windows. Decorative moldings, brackets, and woodwork adorn the interior. Even the outbuildings were ornate The architectural style was sometimes known as “Steamboat Gothic.” Today the home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gascoyne’s own home, located near St. Paul’s Parish House, was simple and featured none of the elegance of the summer homes he designed for others.  The nearby picture shows Gascoyne sitting on the steps of that home beside his wife Mary, their relatives, and his dog “Watch.” When he died at the age of 93, as the oldest man in Ottawa County and the last surviving Civil War veteran, no one could say that the enterprising George Gascoyne had not lived life to the fullest!

A version of this post appeared in Lifestyles2000.

John Brown, Jr. In Canada

Born in Hudson, Ohio in 1821, John Brown, Jr., eldest son of the abolitionist John Brown, took part in the violent struggle in Kansas between the free-staters and the proslavery faction. However, he and his brothers Salmon and Jason and brother-in-law Henry Thompson refused to join the raid on Harper's Ferry. John Brown, Jr., served as agent of Emigration for the British North American Provinces in 1860-1861, where he labored on behalf of African Americans as well as Native Americans. Brown wrote the following letter to his wife, Wealthy (Hotchkiss) Brown from Chatham, Ontario. Working under James Redpath as an agent for the Haitian Bureau of Emigration, John Brown, Jr. recruited African Americans in and around Chatham to emigrate to Haiti. Brown later resigned his position as recruiting agent and took a group of "New York sharpshooters" to Kansas, where he and his men were attached to the Seventh Kansas Cavalry. But within a short time, Brown fell ill and was forced to resign his captaincy. In 1862, John Brown, Jr., purchased a ten-acre plot on the south shore of South Bass Island at Put-in-Bay, Ohio. His sister Ruth and her husband Henry Thompson also settled at Put-in-Bay. Later, Owen Brown, who had participated in the raid at Harper’s Ferry, joined them. Owen lived in a small cabin on his brother’s land; he spent the winter months on nearby Gibraltar Island serving as the caretaker of Jay Cooke’s summer home.

John, Jr., remained on the island until his death in 1895. He farmed, harvested grapes, practiced surveying, taught science and mathematics to the islanders, and lectured on temperance and slavery.

Windsor Canada West
Friday Eve, March 22nd 1861

Ever Dear and faithful Wife,

It is now Friday evening, and I trust before another Friday Eve I shall be on my way to my much loved home once more. Indeed I have long been counting the days. I expected to have been here last Monday, but could not get ready to leave Chatham until this morning. Reached here about 11 o’clock this afternoon and found your dear letter of the 13th, also enclosing once from Jennie to you. I also found here seviral letters from persons in this region who propose going to Hayti. Also, two from Boston, one from Mr. Newton and one from Mr. Redpath. But as you are the only prompt and faithful correspondent I have, I shall answer you first of all. I sent you a paper from Chatham this morning, and one a day or two before. Have read here the paper Called “the sacrifice”, and one of same name from Mrs. H. F. M. Brown. I would now give you the items of my Journal for several days past, but as I shall probably see you so soon I will defer until I see you. It is late at night and all save me have gone to bed. I presume Johnny is by this time fast asleep. How I do want to see you. Tell him I have bought a little axe for him and will bring it home next week in my trunk. I can almost hear him say “Ma, when will next week come?” Tell him that in 7 days more I hope to see him.

I am getting along well in getting emigrants for Hayti. Ones 50 have signified this determination to go from Chatham, and many will go from Dresden, Boston, Rondeau &c, though the greater number will not be ready to leave before Fall.

There are about 20 who intend leaving this place for Hayti in May. The Free Press Came out in another scurrilous article about me shortly after I left here for Chatham. Stating that, I had finally left this part of Canada, without so much as getting a single donkey to go to Hayti. I have nothing more to say to the Press. The Editor is infinitely beneath notice from henceforth.

It will really afford me a resting spell to get once more to a land where prejudice against Color assumes a milder type than it does in Canada. Indeed, if I were myself as black as ebony should not receive more undisguised coldness from the white inhabitants here than I now do, and this simply because I treat the colored man as an equal socially. In all of Canada West, a man would be read out of what they call “Good Society” who should ask a Colored man or woman to eat at the same table with him. In consequence of my boarding and lodging at their Houses, and in the street and at all places meeting them on terms of social equality, I have scarce been recognized by the white inhabitants here, as belonging to the human family. Every where I have met the cold shoulder. It is perhaps well. I am thereby enabled to sympathise with these people in their experience of a new form of Slavery, at least to me. “Man’s inhumanity to me makes countless thousands mourn.”

Tomorrow, I shall answer letters all day. _ On Monday go to little river settlement, and meet a number of those who wish to go this Spring to Hayti. I have just learned that a white man has made an appointment for a meeting in that settlement next week, at which meeting he proposes to prove that I am not John Brown, but an imposter, who is trying to get the colored people away from Canada and back into Slavery. If it is convenient I shall try and attend that meeting, and so find out with certainty who I am.

Well it is getting very late and I will once more bid you goodnight. I may write again before I leave and may not. _ Give to Mr.& Mrs. Smith Edwards my very warm regards. I hope soon to “greet the bride with a holy Kiss” _ Say to Martha, that the long letter she promised to write me, must have miscarried. Perhaps Smith, forgetting to mail it, yet has it in his pocket. If I keep on writing I may fill out my sheet. I dont want to go to sleep, and yet I must or be unfitted for business. It is now nearly three months since I left home. Well do I remember the time Johnny stood in the Road and kept looking into the Hack as long as he could see me. Don’t let him forget me._ These three long months without companionship, its awful. If it had not been for your letters I don’t know how I could have endured it. What a dear thought, that this is some one whose sympathies go out to us ever faithful and true. ­­_ One such, makes all the rest of the world look poor.

If I can get a moments time I shall send you another letter before leaving here. Mr. Redpath wants me to stay until the middle of April, before returning to Ohio, but I had made up my mind to go home at the time I wrote you, and no ordinary event shall prevent me.

Mr. Anderson accompanied me to the cars at Chatham to day. he sends his kindest regards to you and Owen, and Johnny and to the Edwards family_ Shall look for a letter from you up to the time I leave. Hug Johnny for me “real right”, and believe me ever faithfully

Your loving husband
John Brown Jr.

Henry Pletscher and Lake Erie's Buckeye Island

Henry Pletscher

Buckeye Island is a small outcropping of glacial rock lying on the northeast tip of South Bass Island. For Henry Pletscher is was much more than rock and reef; it was his retreat –a place of peace and quiet where he spent long summer days tending his garden and fishing with friends and family.

Born in Cleveland in 1842, Henry served with the 13th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in some of the Civil War’s fiercest battles. After 3 years’ service, he returned home to marry his childhood sweetheart. Following the death of their two-year-old son from diphtheria, Henry headed West in search of his brother. Gone for nearly two years, Henry discovered upon his arrival back in Ohio that his wife, believing him dead, had married again. Heartbroken, Henry set out for the West once more. He re-enlisted, serving in the U. S. Cavalry in the Dakotas and the Arizona Territory with famed Indian fighter General George Crook.

It was Henry’s stories of high adventure fighting the Apaches that held his nieces spellbound. In a 1991 article in the Put-in-Bay Gazette, niece Elsa Watters shared her childhood memories of summer afternoons with Uncle Henry, listening to his tales as they picked raspberries, caught crayfish, and searched for seagulls’ nests.

Henry Pletscher at his cabin on Buckeye Island

According to his niece, Henry purchased the island in 1909. There he built a cabin, tool shed, and dock for his fishing boat and those of the many relatives he invited to Buckeye. Sharing his special place was Henry’s way of repaying family members with whom he stayed each winter.

But Henry’s days on that idyllic island came to an end on his 76th birthday. After stopping for a drink, Henry mistakenly signed papers agreeing to sell Buckeye. The following day, after realizing what he had done, Henry was nearly overcome by the loss. But he knew his little retreat was gone forever. Elsa recalled that “after that day, he seemed to shrink in stature.” It wasn’t long after that he left his beloved island for the Sandusky Soldier’s and Sailor’s Home.

On their visits to Put-in-Bay, his nieces would often stop at Sandusky to see Uncle Henry. They thought he seemed content enough, but life was never the same for Hnery. As Elsa put it, “his sparkle was gone with his island.” Henry Pletscher died there in the spring of 1922.

Without Henry, the winds and waves of Lake Erie began to take their toll on the little island. The garden, cabin, and dock soon were gone. But for Elsa Watters and her sister, their childhood memories of summer days on Buckeye Island with Uncle Henry would remain forever.