James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

This stout-hearted Puritan left three sons and three daughters. Elizabeth and Faithe were married twice, and Anna was the third wife of the Reverend William Robinson. The biography of Jedediah is brief enough: “Born in 1755-6--married Miss wells.”

Rev. Samuel Mills, second son of the Rev. Gideon Mills, graduated at Yale College in 1776, “with a view to the gospel ministry.”

“ Being full of the patriotism prevalent at that time, he entered the American army as lieutenant in the cavalry. In one of those actions which took place in 1777, this young officer received a wound from a horseman's sword in the forehead, was taken prisoner, and conveyed into Philadelphia with a deep and dangerous wound, the scar of which he carried through the remainder of his life. The sick and wounded prisoners in Philadelphia experienced far different treatment from that which those unfortunate American prisoners received from the British and tories in New York in 1776. A kind Providence furnished a goodly number of ministering angels, (if the expression may be allowable,) in the persons of some of the most accomplished ladies of Philadelphia. Those of superior rank and refinement took it upon them to visit and minister to the wants of the suffering prisoners. Among those worthy ladies was Miss Sarah Gilpin, a person of high refinement and accomplishments. Her labors of benevolence brought her and Lieutenant Samuel to an acquaintance which eventuated in his obtaining her hand and heart. He pursued and finished his theological studies, and was married to Miss Gilpin, and was settled pastor over the church and society of Chester, then a part of Saybrook.”

Gideon, the eldest son of the Rev. Gideon Mills, and the grandfather of John Brown, the liberator, was also a lieutenant in the American army, and died in 1813, at Barkhamsted, Connecticut, at the age of sixty-four. He left two sons and four daughters, of whom Ruth, the eldest child, married Owen Brown, the father of our hero.