He was the only son to participate both in the Bleeding Kansas activities — specifically the Pottawatomie massacre, during which he killed a man[1][2] — and his father's raid on Harpers Ferry.

[5]: 346  ("[S]o strong is the woodsman in him, that he gave me not only the direction and probable extent of every mountain and valley he passed, night or day, but the nature and quality of the timber almost everywhere in his way.

His burial site, atop a hill near Altadena, California, has become a minor tourist destination, reached via a public hiking trail.

"[13] He was described thus in the 1859 warrant for his arrest: Owen Brown is thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, about six feet in height, with fair complexion, though somewhat freckled—has red hair, and very heavy whiskers of the same color.

[15]: 605  He wrote Lydia Maria Child: "I have a middle-aged son [Owen was 35], who has been in some degree a cripple from his childhood, who would have as much as he could well do to earn a living.

Brown biographer Richard Hinton only had vague information: "he had been physically unfortunate, when younger, in the injury of an arm or shoulder, I think, through which he had suffered so severely as to prematurely age him, and produced a trouble of some kind by which he was subject to drowsiness.

"[14]: 556 [16][5]: 344  One source says the injury was the result of "throwing a stone when a boy";[5] another, that Owen was "seriously crippled in his Kansas campaigns, and unfit for service in the Union army in consequence".

[4] Owen, as he told it later, before the raid "spent many months in the mountains of the South, searching out suitable places for the rendezvous and concealment of liberty-seeking slaves".

When the raid failed, with a $25,000 reward on his head (equivalent to $847,778 in 2023),[5]: 348  he escaped capture and underwent what has been called "the most difficult and tedious flight that ever occurred in this country".

[5] Together with him in John Jr.'s home for three weeks were fellow escaped raiders Barclay Coppock and Francis Jackson Meriam, as well as Brown's first biographer, James Redpath.

The Attorney General of Ohio, Republican Christopher Wolcott, refused to honor Virginia's request for Owen's arrest and extradition.

[26]: 25  However, Owen "suffered from the celebrity which his adventures and his father's fame gave him; and this was one reason why he retired with his brother to a remote cabin, where, nevertheless, sight-seers and importunate friends followed him, and left him very little of that solitary leisure which he so much valued.

[53] According to one report, "it was difficult to get Owen to speak of the tragic events of his life",[6] but another says that "to listen to his recital of their escape was as thrilling and much more interesting than stories of the most daring of fictitious heroes.

"[51] "Owen Brown had related to his sister Ruth all the particulars of the expedition to the South with a colored man named Green, and she will publish this with many valuable memorandas of her father not yet printed";[38] this publication never took place.

An obituary reveals that besides raising poultry and cows, Jason and Owen, through "selling their photographs", "received enough barely to survive".

[6] At the time (1886–1889), to print a picture using ink onto paper or card stock was expensive, as it required a human engraver, but making photographic copies was much easier.

The Brown boys' cabins, with them and sometimes visitors outside, were photographed several times for this purpose, for souvenir pictures which the men sold.

[55] The fact that Jason and Owen Brown, together with their sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, are living near Pasadena, and were in town, did not seem to become known to the visiting soldiers until late in the afternoon.

When it was known, the children of the old hero of Ossawattomie were put into a carriage, the horses unhitched, and with a long rope the Kansas, Iowa, and California boys formed in procession and hauled the family through the streets, the band at the head of the line playing “John Brown’s Body,” and the whole enthusiastic crowd singing the stirring battle hymn and cheering.

"[38] According to an obituary: About five years ago Jason and Owen Brown took a homestead on a bench of mountain land five or six miles north of Pasadena, at the settlement now called Las Casitas.

This they subsequently sold and took land higher up the mountain side, built a cabin, cleared and worked a few acres, and li[v]ed there—two feeble old men, alone.

[58]Jason wrote, in an 1886 letter, "The people of Pasadena are eastern, mostly, and are very kind to us; they raised over $100 (~$3,391 in 2023), a short time ago without our knowing it, and gave it to us to buy a cow.

[23]: 4  An as-yet unidentified photographer carried his equipment up the mountain on several occasions, and left us good pictures of both cabins, including the second one seen from above.

"[52] Owen died of pneumonia January 8, 1889, at the home of his sister Ruth Brown Townsend, in Pasadena, California, at the age of 64.

[23]: 4 A marching band escorted the 2,000 mourners, nearly the entire population of Pasadena, in the funeral procession up to Little Roundtop Hill in West Altadena in the Meadows (34°12′58″N 118°09′41″W / 34.216199°N 118.161381°W / 34.216199; -118.161381).

[68] In May 1889, a newspaper remarked that "the tomb of Owen Brown receives as much attention from visitors as any other point of interest in the Sierra Madre range.

"[69] Jason left the cottage when Owen died, and found employment in the Sierra Madre with the new, scenic Mount Lowe Railway.

Two iron ornaments, a heavy hook on the left, and a 6" diameter ring on the right, were attached to eyelets in the marker and could be moved—symbolizing freedom from the shackles of slavery and rapture from mortal bounds.

In this novel he accompanies his father on his trip to England of 1848, and a pregnant unmarried woman, who commits suicide by jumping overboard, is the mysterious lady he loved.

He is portrayed by actor Beau Knapp in the 2020 Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by James McBride.