Travelers Rest and John Brown

This site in West Branch marks Travelers Rest, an inn once owned by James Townsend. Its claim to history runs straight into the antislavery struggle. When the militant abolitionist John Brown passed through West Branch in eighteen fifty six, he lodged here.

This Quaker corner of Iowa was sympathetic to the cause, and Brown found friends and shelter among its people. Not long after, he trained part of his small army at nearby Springdale, preparing them for his eighteen fifty nine raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia. That raid failed and Brown was hanged, but it helped push a divided nation toward civil war.

Today Travelers Rest is a quiet reminder that the road to that conflict ran through small Iowa towns like this one.