Born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, John Brown was the son of a wandering New Englander. Brown spent much of his youth in Ohio, where he was taught in local schools to resent compulsory education and by his parents to revere the Bible and hate slavery. As a boy he herded cattle for General William Hull’s army during the war of 1812; later he served as foreman of his family’s tannery. In 1820 he married Dianthe Lusk, who bore him seven children; five years later they moved to Pennsylvania to operate a tannery of their own. Within a year after Dianthe’s death in 1831, Brown wed sixteen year old Mary Anne Day, by whom he