Osawatomie - also a small town in Kansas - was best known as the “crazy farm” during the 60’s and 70’s and was where all the indigent mentally ill and where what we called the “real crazies” were referred to at the time. Staffed by psychiatrist and psychiatric residents who had their M.D.’s primarily from countries outside the U.S. Interestingly, all Down Syndrome children and adults were also housed there after being judged mentally unsound by the Kansas court system. Still has a state hospital there but no longer know anything about the innerworkings.
In August, a company of over three hundred Missourians under the command of Major General John W. Reid crossed into Kansas and headed towards Osawatomie, Kansas, intending to destroy the Free State settlements there, and then march on Topeka and Lawrence.[9]
On the morning of August 30, 1856, they shot and killed Brown's son Frederick and his neighbor David Garrison on the outskirts of Pottawatomie. Brown, outnumbered more than seven to one, arranged his 38 men behind natural defenses along the road. Firing from cover, they managed to kill at least 20 of Reid's men and wounded 40 more.[10]
Reid regrouped, ordering his men to dismount and charge into the woods. Brown's small group scattered and fled across the Marais des Cygnes River. One of Brown's men was killed during the retreat and four were captured. While Brown and his surviving men hid in the woods nearby, the Missourians plundered and burned Osawatomie. Despite being defeated, Brown's bravery and military shrewdness in the face of overwhelming odds brought him national attention and made him a hero to many Northern abolitionists,[11] who gave him the nickname "Osawatomie Brown". This incident was dramatized in the play Osawatomie Brown.