The inhabitants of the town were chiefly of Irish, English, and German descent. Besides building six churches of varying faiths (one of which, St. Peter’s Catholic Church, is still standing and in use today), they established five private girls’ schools. A man could get a drink at the Gault House or take a meal at the Potomac Restaurant or the Wager House. If he so desired, he could join the Masons, the Odd Fellows, or the Sons of Temperance. Nearly everyone was prosperous. It was a good time for the town and its people. [Illustration: This photograph of Harpers Ferry from the Maryland side of the Potomac shows the town as it appeared about the time of the raid. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge, by which John Brown and his raiders entered the village, is at the left.] John Brown arrived amidst this prosperity on July 3, 1859. Not yet 60 years old, the rigors of frontier living had nevertheless left their imprint upon him and there were those who said he looked and walked more than ever “like an old man.” In March a Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper had described him as “a medium-sized, compactly-built and wiry man, and as quick as a cat in his movements. His hair is of a salt and pepper hue and as stiff as bristles, he has a long, waving, milk-white goatee, which gives him a somewhat patriarchal appearance, his eyes are gray and sharp.” He had grown the beard before his last trip to Kansas in 1858, and it covered his square chin and straight, firm mouth, changing his appearance markedly. When he arrived in Harpers Ferry the beard had been shortened to within an inch and a half of his face, because, his daughter Annie later recalled, he thought it “more likely to disguise him than a clean face or than the long beard.” With Brown were two of his sons—34-year-old Owen and 20-year-old Oliver—and Kansas veteran Jeremiah G. Anderson. The 26-year-old, Indiana-born Anderson was the grandson of Southern slaveholders and had joined the abolitionist cause in 1857 after working several unproductive years as a peddler, farmer, and sawyer. Determined to eliminate slavery, Anderson once vowed to “make this land of liberty and equality shake to the centre.” After consulting briefly with Cook, who had been serving as a schoolteacher, book salesman, and canal-lock tender, and had even married a local girl since being sent to Harpers Ferry the year before, Brown and his three companions took up residence in a private home in Sandy Hook, a small village about a mile down the Potomac on the Maryland shore. The names they gave their landlord were “Isaac Smith & Sons.” To anyone asking their business in the area, Brown told them they were simple farmers looking for good farmland to develop.