Built circa 1830 by Benjamin O. Greene and Salmon Hoisington, it was rented by the Perkins family as the Stone House (today's Perkins Stone Mansion) was being built. Colonel Simon Perkins purchased the structure in early 1844 and then rented it to John Brown and his family.

Recovering from bankruptcy in 1844, John Brown signed an agreement with Colonel Simon Perkins to establish a wool partnership. The arrangement required Perkins to furnish food and shelter for the sheep, with Brown providing care by washing the sheep, shearing the wool, and preparing the products for market. Also included in the contract were provisions for the Brown family: “Said Perkins agrees to let said Brown the frame dwelling house on his farm (south of the house in which he now lives) door-yard, garden grounds, and the privilege of getting wood for fuel, for the rent of thirty dollars a year . . .”

John Brown and his family rented the house from 1844 to 1854. In 1846, the partnership of Perkins and Brown prospered to the point of an expansion office in Springfield, Massachusetts, to establish better trade relations with wool dealers in the area. Brown and his oldest sons went to Massachusetts to set up the partnership. His sons then returned to Akron to manage the Perkins and Brown flock of sheep while Mary and the younger children went to Massachusetts. Brown would travel back and forth between Massachusetts and, later, New York, working for Perkins and using the Akron house as their home base.

Unfortunately, this venture ended in various lawsuits that cost the partnership approximately $40,000 (over a million dollars in today's economy). John Brown left Akron after fulfilling the rest of his contract, but he continued to petition the people of Summit County for anti-slavery support.

A new exhibit, "Family. Farm. Freedom." was unveiled in 2019 on May 9th, John Brown 219th birthday. Funded in part by the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the exhibit shares the life of John Brown with interpretation and hands-on exhibits for all ages. For our Juneteenth community gathering that same year, renowned artist Woodrow Nash, also a Society board director, donated and unveiled a new bust of John Brown.

In an interview with Leianne Neff Heppner, President and CEO of the Summit Historical Society on the Spirits in the John Brown House, she said, "So I hate to admit it, but yeah, I get the, you know, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and we've had many interesting stories here all the time that I've worked here in almost 20 years. So we've had contractors who've left the house because they heard footsteps upstairs, and there was no one else upstairs. I've had interns who could identify ladies in a different era that they saw in the house. And we also had an interesting situation in which there was a problem with a furnace in the attic, and the contractor said, Well, you're really lucky the furnace was turned off, or you could have had a fire, in which case, I was the only person who knew that there was a furnace in the attic. And I didn't turn it off. So you decide what happened there?"

This video was posted on Facebook by Around Akron with Blue Green. The link to the video is in the link below.