John Brown's Surveying Compass
When John Brown was a teenager, he taught himself surveying
from a tattered copy of Flint's
Survey, a standard text for the profession.
After working in his father's tannery all day, he would practice surveying in the evening. It was a profession that he occasionally resumed over the years. While in Kansas, Brown used surveying to spy on the movements of proslavery men. Brown's surveying equipment in the collections of the Kansas Museum of History includes a brass compass (pictured), two brass rulers, two brass protractors, and a plumb bob, all in their original storage case. The equipment was made in Troy, New York, by Phelps and Gurley. The famed abolitionist is said to have used this equipment mostly in Anderson, Linn, and Bourbon counties in Kansas. He formed a partnership with Simon B. McGrew, who settled southwest of Mound City and had been trained as a surveyor. Brown and McGrew often worked together on survey projects. Like Brown, McGrew was an outspoken free-state advocate. Known as "The Fighting Quaker," he was opposed to war and violence but kept a pair of Colt Navy revolvers on hand for protection. Very likely both men used their surveying skills as a pretense for tracking proslavery men. Two of Brown's sons usually went with him to operate the rod and chain. 
Samuel Reader, an early settler of North Topeka and a chronicler of territorial life in Kansas, recorded his experience with John Brown in a pastel drawing (pictured) done in 1906. On August 3, 1856, Reader was standing watch outside a camp of free-state men along Pony Creek in Brown County. Brown approached in his wagon (with a tripod set up in the wagon bed), and Reader directed him to the location of the free-state camp. When John Brown left Kansas for the last time in January 1859 (he was hanged for treason in December of that year), he sold the compass to his friend McGrew. It later passed to McGrew's son, Charles, who deposited it with the Kansas Historical Society in 1915. Charles McGrew was influenced to do so by his nephew, the Governor of Kansas--Arthur Capper. Charles McGrew noted in 1915 that others had expressed interest in the equipment, from museums to collectors. McGrew did not want it to leave Kansas, however, saying, "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave. But his soul goes marching on, and his compass shall never be sold." Samuel Reader's daughter Elizabeth donated the pastel of John Brown with his surveying equipment, along with other works of Reader, following Samuel's death in 1914.
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