The Erasmus Miller Owen Family, part 28
Well. When we began this trip through the 1890's, I never dreamed it would take us more than a year (yikes!) to get though. Hopefully, today we will be able to wrap it all up and finally move on (or back, since we're doing this investigation of the Owen line out of chronological order). We've discovered so far that the 1890's most definitely had its ups and downs for Erasmus Miller Owen and his family. The early years of the decade saw Erasmus' eldest son, Sam, being convicted of manslaughter and serving two years of hard labor in the Texas prison system, his third son, Erasmus (a.k.a. Ras), trying to recover from a traumatic head injury, and his youngest son, thirteen year-old Conrad, running away from home to his sister in New Mexico. Not a happy time. However, within the next two years, both errant sons would return home, and tax rolls indicate that Uncle Ras may have been recovering. Things were looking up.
The early 1890's also saw Erasmus' efforts to establish a Baptist college pay off, as Howard Payne opened its doors and began its work. Of course, the college was plagued with financial difficulties from the start, so that would have added to the stressful nature of the new decade. On the bright side, though, Erasmus' church, New Hope #2 or Wolf Valley as it was commonly called, was growing rapidly, which would have certainly brought him joy to help offset the distressing nature of the other unfortunate events in his life. But then, as they began to move into the middle years of the decade, Erasmus and his family had to deal with an economic depression and a severe drought. Ouch. Not fun. And that is where we find ourselves today.
As I mentioned before, there are either no tax records for Brown County beyond 1895 or they were not microfilmed and/or put on the FamilySearch website, so we have no way of knowing if or when things began to look up for the family financially. We do, however, have some insight into other aspects of their lives as the decade wound down to its conclusion.
Scene 1: In which the Economic Downturn Continues, and another Drought Begins
Well, drat. As the middle years of the decade advanced, it doesn't appear that things were looking up in Texas. Well, actually, according to various sources online, the economy began to grow again in June of 1894, but by December of 1895 it had slumped back into a major recession again, and the financial downturn would continue through 1896. Whether rural Americans, our family included, saw much of an improvement during that year and a half I couldn't say, but either way it wouldn't have been great - continuing hardship, or hope dashed on the rocks . . . take your pick!
There is one document that indicates that things may not have been going so well financially for the family - a deed between Uncle Ras and Lipscomb Norvell. Remember him? The attorney from whom everyone was purchasing land with promissory notes? Erasmus (Sr.) bought land from a man named W. K. Wilson and his wife in August of 1892 for a small sum plus the assumption of Wilson's promissory notes to Lipscomb Norvell. Those notes, each for $150.70 plus 10% interest came due in October of 1892, 1893, and 1894.
Although there is no deed showing that Uncle Ras made a land purchase from Norvell (or anyone else for that matter), he is suddenly shown as owning approximately 77 acres on the 1893 and 1894 tax rolls. There is a deed where he sells that land . . . back to Mr. Norvell:
%20Brown%20County%20Deeds%20Book%2047%20pg%20146%20(1896)%20-%20color.jpg) |
Brown County, Tx
Deed Book 47, Page 146
Erasmus Owen to Lipscomb Norvell
|
This deed says that Uncle Ras had purchased the land on the 25th of January, 1893 for - get this - four promissory notes of $87 and some change, plus 10% interest, each due in successive one-year installments. So, he was to pay payments on January 25th of 1893, 1894, 1895, and 1896. On the 10th of January 1896, though, Uncle Ras sold the land back to Norvell for . . . the cancellation of the promissory notes.
Did Uncle Ras pay the first two notes (he reported owning the land for two years), but was unable to make both the 1895 and 1896 payments? Was he given a grace period (plus interest of course!) for 1895 and still wasn't able to come up with the money owed on both of the last two notes, and that is why the land wasn't officially transferred back until 1896? Was he unable to pay off the notes because his income, whatever it may have been, was less than expected? Or was he, perhaps, having to help out his father who was struggling to make ends meet? It is possible, even, that in 1894 he gave his father the money that he himself would have used to make his own payments, in order for his father to pay his final promissory note in October, just three months before his own 1895 payment was due.
There's no way to know, but we can be pretty certain that the drought that began in 1896 certainly didn't help matters any. Based on
this rainfall graph, Brown County probably didn't see its effects until 1897, and it was nowhere near as bad as the drought of 1893, but even so, they received about 15% less than the average amount of rainfall, coming on the heels of a severe drought with only one year of average rainfall in between, meaning that the groundwater levels may have still been relatively low, meaning that those seasonal streams and stock tanks may have dried up earlier in the year than usual, meaning livestock may have been struggling to get enough water. In addition, most of Texas hadn't started employing irrigation yet, so crops may have been struggling as well.
Scene 2: In which the Family Gets an Education
Remember how I just said that things might not have been going so well financially for the family as they entered the second half of the decade? Well, it must not have been too bad for them, at least at the start, because Erasmus somehow found a way to send several of his children to college.
Edgar had attended Howard Payne College in its opening year of 1891 and again in 1892. He had been ordained as a minister in 1890, which means that his tuition was free, so his education wasn't a financial burden on himself or his father. There are no Owen children listed as students in the 1893 or 1895-96 catalogues (the catalogue for 1894 seems to have been completely lost). But in the 1896-97 school year, Uncle Ras, Minnie, Clara, and Leona attended the college:
(Sorry for the lack of crispness in this image; this is the largest file that The Portal to Texas History allows for download without obtaining special permission.)
You'll notice that Mark, Conrad and Orlena are absent from this list. Mark would have been about twenty-one years old at the time, and I suppose it's possible that he attended during the year in which we have no catalog, but I am thinking that he didn't attend at all (only I can't tell you why right now because it would completely mess up the flow of this post, so we'll come back to that later). Orlena would have been just shy of her fifteenth birthday when the term began, so she was most likely still attending high school, probably in the town of Rising Star. As for Conrad, he would have already been nineteen years old, so we would expect to see him at Howard Payne as well, but we don't . . . . until the following year:
Curiously enough, Conrad was considered a "preparatory" student, which means that he was taking basic classes, like we would take in a prep school or honors courses in a regular high school today. In the catalogue in which his siblings appear, there is only one list for preparatory and college students together, so we don't know for sure which program they had entered, but Uncle Ras was taking the Bible Class:
Now, you'll notice at the bottom of the page a tally of the number of students in each department at the college. The Primary department was like a middle school, and the Bible class was designed for ministers, but I don't know if the others were part of the college or preparatory departments or if they were stand-alone programs. Do you see the second one? Elocution and Physical Culture? That's what Clara was doing:
Just what did that entail, you ask?
Interesting. I knew from reading the introduction to the
McGuffy's Readers that elocution has to do with speaking clearly and articulating words properly, but who knew you could stretch that skill out into two years of study? What is also interesting is that the college offered courses for obtaining a teaching certificate, but it doesn't show that in the recapitulation above. This is particularly interesting to me, because according to my grandmother, Clara spent some time as a school teacher while she was in Texas.
Anyway, I wonder just how much the tuition set Erasmus back. And in case you didn't notice, all of his children are listed with addresses in Brownwood, not May, which means they were living on campus, which would have been an additional expense. Luckily for us, the cost is laid out in the catalogue:
I think Uncle Ras may have attended for free, though, just like Edgar. If, as the family story says, he had been preaching as a young man, it is possible that he was already a licensed minister, seeing as how he was already thirty-two years old at this point. If so, he would have just had to pay something like $2.50 per week for his room and board . . . which sounds great until you put it into an inflation calculator and find out that the value was closer to $95 in today's money!
And what about the girls? They would have been able to take advantage of the "Special Offer" listed on the right-hand side of the page: Tuition plus room and board for about $125 for the year, which is equivalent to just under $4700 per daughter in today's money. Yikes! I don't know how Erasmus managed to send all three girls, but I'm pretty confident that the cost was a major factor in why they only stayed for one year. (Well, except for Minnie, but we'll get to that in a minute.) Actually, we don't even know that they attended for the whole year; the special offer lists a one-semester price of about $65, equivalent to $2500 in today's money. It's possible that some or all only stayed that long. Maybe Uncle Ras was helping out with the tuition costs, and that is why he had to sell his land back.
But what about Conrad? If Erasmus didn't have the money to keep sending the girls, how did he afford to send his youngest son? Well, I'm thinking that, like his brothers, Conrad also received free tuition:
That Reverend C. Owen from May that we see about three-quarters of the way down the list for the Bible Class had to be Conrad. We'll talk more about this in a post dedicated strictly to him, but apparently he was a very gifted preacher who began work in the ministry at an early age. There are conflicting reports as to when he was actually ordained, but one version of events places it in 1895, when he was only eighteen years old. (Of course, the catalog specifies "licensed" not "ordained", so maybe that is where the confusion arises.) Conrad also only attended Howard Payne for the one year (well, at this point - he would return later on) and I think it is because he was attending Baylor instead - but we'll get to that!
But we've gotten a little ahead of ourselves here. . . .
Scene 3: In which an Immeasurable Loss Occurs
On the 28th of May, 1896, Erasmus' wife, Rhoda Salome Eastman Owen died. As far as I can tell, nobody remembers today how or why this occurred. Was it the result of a long illness? A sudden downturn in health? An infection from an injury or accident? Who knows?
Rhoda was approximately sixty years old at the time, and her youngest child was already fourteen years old. So, not a total tragedy for the children, but I'm sure Erasmus felt her loss keenly.
The children's foray into higher education came right on the heels of their mother's death. Tuition had to be prepaid, and the 1897-98 catalogue implied that enrollment took place during the previous school term, which would mean that Ras, Minnie, Clara, and Leona might have been enrolled and paid a deposit or even the full amount before their mother passed. Or, it is possible that the family decided a change of scenery and newfound purpose would help everyone deal with their grief.
Rhoda was buried in the cemetery at May, not the one in Wolf Valley, probably because her and Erasmus' daughter Mary was already buried there.
Here we have a shared headstone with Erasmus. I'm pretty sure that this is a modern headstone erected by some descendants at some point. I say this because
It looks awful expensive. I don't think any of their children, even with resources pooled, would have been able to afford this. (Well, except Mark, who ended up making the deal of the century trading land in Texas for some in New Mexico which turned out to have oil, and he apparently became quite the philanthropist. But that was much later.)
and
There is also a probably-newer headstone for Rhoda and Erasmus' unmarried children in the cemetery, Mary and Uncle Ras:
You'll notice that there is no death date for Uncle Ras. That means that either the stone was erected before he died, or much after his death, when the person commissioning the stone didn't know his date of death. As I've mentioned before, Uncle Ras isn't even buried in Texas, but instead in Arizona. So this was either erected way back before he left Texas (but after it was a known fact that he would never marry!?), or so much later that the whereabouts of his death and burial were unknown to whomever paid to have the stone put up. (This is why I'm thinking it might not have been his brother Mark who had the stones made, because by the time he came into his money Uncle Ras was already living in Arizona with his sister Clara. Plus, he knew exactly when his brother died.)
and
There is a second headstone for Rhoda in the cemetery!
Here is the second stone:
This appears to me to be the original stone erected shortly after she was buried. It is a single stone, which makes sense since Erasmus would live just over another twenty years after Rhoda's death. It is much more modest, which fits in with what we know about the family's financial situation at the time. Also, the style of the engraving much more closely matches virtually every other headstone in the cemetery from the 1890's - none of them look like either of the double headstones I showed you here, which both have exactly the same font, with 6's that absolutely scream modern. In addition, this headstone looks much older, not only in the style but in the weathering, not to mention the fact that it has apparently sunk into the ground over a long period of time.
(On a side note - I am guessing that we find no single stone for Erasmus in the May Cemetery, even though he was buried there later, because either he told his children that he didn't want one, or his children could not afford to have one made, or even because there actually was a stone at one time, but maybe it fell over and was buried or something. I mean, look at how sunken this one is - if you zoom in you can see that at the very bottom it says "born", which means it would have had a line for her birth date, then a line for the word "died" and then a line for another date, and if other headstones of the era are any indication, also a short epitaph. I think the entire bottom half of the stone is under the ground.)
I like this small stone much better. It speaks to me in a way that the larger monument does not.
With Rhoda's passing, Erasmus lost his wife of thirty-eight years. But life went on. Erasmus presumably continued preaching, but was he actually pastoring any churches anymore? Aside from the four marriages he performed during the second half of 1896, he completely drops out of the records until December of 1897.
Scene 4: In which Erasmus Disappears from the Records
What, exactly, was Erasmus up to during 1897? His absence from the records initially made me think that he had come down with the same illness that led to Rhoda's death, but when I discovered that he continued performing marriages from July through December of 1896, it doesn't seem likely. (Although, he didn't perform a single marriage during 1895, so it is possible that he and Rhoda were ill for some time and he got better but she didn't.)
The dissertation that I shared with you a few posts ago,
A History of Pecan Valley and Brown County Baptist Associations, states that by 1897, ten years after its founding by Erasmus, the Wolf Valley church was down to only eight members. This was after rapidly increasing from sixteen to fifty members in its first three years. The dissertation attributes the loss to new roads and the railroad drawing members away to other churches, presumably closer to their homes. I'm not so sure how much transportation really played a part, though.
First of all, the railroad didn't even reach the northeast corner of Brown County until 1912. Also, if you look at the map I made of the marriages Erasmus performed, you can see that most of those members lived relatively close to the May/Wolf Valley areas (or near Erasmus' Pleasant Grove church). I don't think new roads would have drawn members away, unless they
wanted to leave the church in the first place.
I tried looking up which churches were constituted in the northeastern section of Brown County after 1890, and pretty much only came up with two, one of which was the Pleasant Grove Church, of which Erasmus was also the pastor! I did discover, however, that there was a church in Rising Star - the town six miles north of Wolf Valley - that appears to have become a full-time church relatively early in the 1900's. (This means that it had gained a relatively large number of members by that time.) Perhaps it was drawing members away from the Wolf Valley church, or perhaps Erasmus had actually been drawing people away from it! The Rising Star church had been founded back in 1882, and we saw from the marriage records that several of the families who attended Erasmus' church lived around (and even to the northwest!) of Rising Star. Could it be that Erasmus, a "very able and well-known Baptist preacher", who had established a new church in 1887 in the northeast corner of the county, was actually drawing members away from other churches? If so, why then did he lose them?
I'm thinking that maybe he didn't. I'm thinking that, for whatever reason, he might not have been the pastor of the Wolf Valley church by 1897. Maybe he gave it up if/when he was ill in 1895, or decided to step back for a while after Rhoda's death. Maybe he wasn't preaching at all in 1897.
This idea is actually supported by the absence of his name in the 1898 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention:
The list of pastors for this year, in which Erasmus is conspicuously absent, is a list of "pastors engaged in the active work of the ministry." The information was gleaned from the "Associational minutes" and "denominational press" (like The Baptist Standard newspaper), which one should think would be not only accurate, but comprehensive as well. The fact that two other pastors from May, Texas were on the list instead of Erasmus tells us that Erasmus wasn't pastoring the Wolf Valley (or any other) church in 1897.
And how about this: Sometime in 1899, George W. Lasher, D. D. published a book called The Ministerial Directory of the Baptist Churches in the United States of America (plus 27 other words). It contained the names and "abbreviated history" of nearly 13,000 Baptist ministers in the United States. The author began with the list of names from the American Baptist Yearbook, and sent out something like 18,000 letters requesting the credentials and updated information from each ordained minister. Erasmus' son Edgar appears in the book:
Erasmus, however, does not.
I don't know how long it took for the book to be compiled, but from the looks of Edgar's entry, this reflects the status as of 1897. Although Erasmus appeared in the Baptist yearbooks in 1895-1898 as a resident of May, Texas, he apparently did not respond to the author's request for information.
Erasmus' name doesn't appear in any articles about fifth Sunday meetings or any other Baptist conventions of any type during 1897 either. Nor does it appear in the marriage records of Brown County, even though one would think that it should have . . . .
Scene 5: In which Erasmus' Children Leave the Nest
On the 28th of September, 1897, Erasmus' twenty-six year-old daughter Minnie was married, making her the first of Erasmus' four children married in the second half of the decade (Edgar had gotten married in 1893). Minnie married a man named Andrew J. Conklin, a widower who already had seven children between the ages of five and seventeen. Although the 1900 census lists him as a farmer, he was involved in politics and served as a county commissioner for several years. Probably more importantly in Erasmus' eyes, however, was the fact that he was a deacon in the Baptist church.
Here is a photo, dated 1897 on the back, showing Andrew (A. J. in most of the records) and Minnie in what was presumably their wedding portrait:
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Andrew J. and Minnie Owen Conklin
Brown County, Texas
1897 |
Even though the two were married in Brown County, Erasmus did not perform the marriage ceremony:
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Brown County, TX
Marriage Book C, Page 8
Andrew J. Conklin & Minnie Owen |
Instead, they were married by a man named C. C. Smith. Although he didn't sign his name as "Reverend" and was the only person performing marriages in the entire county who did not sign with some sort of title like "Minister of the Gospel", over the next several years he would appear in the Baptist records as being a preacher/pastor in the May area. In fact, the 1898 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention listed him as one of the two active pastors there.
So why did C. C. Smith marry Minnie instead of her father, who we know performed the marriage of her older sister Letitia when she got married? Was it because he was pastoring whichever church they were attending at the time? Or was it because Erasmus was unable to do the honors for some reason or another?
Well, way back when I first started thinking about this question, I thought that maybe looking at the marriage records of Erasmus' other children might answer the question for us.
They didn't. For one thing, we don't have marriage records for all of the children, because some of the marriages took place in counties where the records have neither been microfilmed nor digitized. I had to rely on other documents like newspaper articles and a deed - yes, a deed - to fill in the blanks. Well, most of the blanks. And what I ended up with actually made me more confused than ever.
Erasmus' daughter Orlena was the next to leave the nest. (I don't have a wedding photo for her.) She married Philemon Frank Harris - the brother of a young man Erasmus had married in Brown County at the beginning of 1896 - on either the 30th of August 1897, or the 4th of January 1898. Or, actually, the 3rd of July 1898.
Ah, the joys of research!
Here is Orlena's obituary:
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The Abilene Reporter-News
22 August 1969 |
According to this, she was married on August 30, 1897 at Midway in Jones County. There are no marriage records for Jones County, Texas on Ancestry. There are no marriage records for Jones County, Texas on FamilySearch. As far as I can tell, there are no marriage records for Jones County, Texas anywhere online at all. There is an index on the Jones County clerk's website:
Hmmm. This shows a Frank Harris and an Orlena Harris married on the 3rd of January 1898. Now, I'm pretty sure this is our Orlena with a mistake in the marriage record or transcription showing her with her married name instead of her maiden name. What are the chances that we would find an Orlena and Frank Harris in the right place getting married at about the right time?
Now take a look at the 1900 census entry for Orlena:
 |
1900 Census
Fisher County, Texas |
Do you see those three ones in the center of the form? The one just to the right of the "M" tells us that Orlena had been married for one year. Since the census page was filled out on the 29th of June, that should tell us that they were married sometime between June 30, 1898 and June 28, 1899. (Or I guess right up to the census date, because nobody is going to put a zero for the number of years.)
So neither of the dates we have match the census report, but the second one is closer. That is what I've been going with up until this point, but I just realized while writing this post that I didn't know whether I'd ever searched for a newspaper article announcing their marriage. I went to the Portal to Texas History and popped in Orlena's name and got this:
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The Abilene Reporter
8 July 1898 |
According to the newspaper, Orlena was married on July 3, 1898, when she was just shy of turning seventeen years old. So now the census record makes sense. And we can see that the index from the Jones County website just has an error in the way the month was recorded, and I can totally understand how a 1 and a 7 (January vs. July) could get mixed up.
But . . . . Is anyone else out there wondering what Orlena was doing in Jones County?
Well, Erasmus' son Mark was married in November of 1898. Guess where? Yep. Jones County. And once again, the newspaper articles have conflicting information:
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The Abilene Reporter
18 Nov 1898 |
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The Taylor County News
25 Nov 1898 |
According to the first one, they were married on the 17th of November. According to the second one, they were married on the 13th. I am inclined to believe the first one, because the second newspaper was a once a week paper and it would be more likely for them to get it wrong. Oh! Wait! I should be able to look them up on the same website! (Hold on . . . .)
Ta-da!
On the 13th of November 1898, Mark Owen, age twenty-three, married Mary Eva Moore in Jones County, Texas. Unless, of course the person entering the information into the index got the dates backwards, because as you can see, they list the 17th as the "application date". (You are supposed to be able to order documents from this website if you create an account, which I did, but it won't let me actually log in. I was hoping that it would give me a preview of the marriage certificate before paying, and I could see what date was actually recorded. If anyone else wants' to give it a go, you can find the website
here - this is the log-in page; follow the prompts, choose Jones County in the drop-down menu you will eventually arrive at, and then you can probably figure it out from there!)
Here is a photo of Mark and Eva that looks like it is their wedding portrait:
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Mark and Eva Moore Owen
Texas, 1898 |
(This is a "restored" version. Not only are tiny bits of the embossed pattern flaking off across the entire card, but (quite unfortunately) somebody spilled their coffee or something all over this photo at some time in the past. They must have been too afraid of erasing the image to even try to blot it off. I had to make some judgement calls as I erased as much of the brown as I could with the free online photo editing program
Photopea; I had to reconstruct one side of Mark's jaw and part of his jacket (it was completely missing the lapel!), but I couldn't remove all of the stains on his face or shirt and tie without changing the shadowing and subtle features, so I chose to leave other portions only partially cleaned so that the staining would make sense.)
I think that perhaps Mark and Orlena had been in Jones County together, but is anyone else out there wondering why? Had Orlena been there keeping house for Mark when she met Frank, fell madly in love, and got married? Or had she already met Frank back in Brown County, and then Frank moved to Jones County and so did Mark, and so Orlena (who was already smitten with Frank) jumped at the chance to go keep house for her brother?
And then, on the 24th of December in the same year, Erasmus' twenty year-old daughter Leona married a man named J. R. Turner . . . in Jones County, Texas. So, for some reason, Leona was in Jones County too. (I don't have a wedding photo for Leona either - in fact, it appears hardly anybody even knew she married this man until I discovered the fact by reading the deed I'm about to show you about a year ago!) And I barely found this on the internet just now while writing this post:
I think it's time we looked at a map.
Okay. If you look way down at the bottom right corner, you will see the town of May in Brown County. If you look up at Jones County, you will see the town of Hodges near the bottom of the county. That is where Midway was. (It turns out that it wasn't really a town - today there is a Midway church and Midway cemetery, but both are in the town of Hodges. Town, community - I'm using the words interchangeably here.) So that's not all that close to home, if home was Brown County, is it? So where was Erasmus at this time?
Well, we know that in the summer of 1898 he was still in Brown County, because he was starting the Bethel church there at that time. But had he moved on with his children to Jones County by the end of that year? Well, there is a deed that implies that he had not:
According to this deed, on December 10, 1898 Erasmus sold all of his remaining land in Brown County. His ten youngest children, as the heirs of Rhoda, technically owned half of the property and so were listed on the deed as well. Although the deed suggests that the children (and most of the husbands) were present as witnesses on that day, I don't actually think that was the case. I'm pretty sure that only Erasmus, Ras, and Edgar were present in Brown County, and everyone else gave a statement in the county of their residence, and then the affidavit was notarized and sent to the clerk of Brown County. So every single one of the remaining children did this at a later date, and although the Brown County clerk probably wasn't very happy about having to wait for them all to come in before he could record the deed, it turned out nicely for us, because now we can see where everybody was. Well, sort of. Actually, not exactly.
This is what the deed tells us:
E. M. – Brown (13 Dec 1898)
Uncle Ras – Brown (13 Dec 1898)
Edgar – Brown (10 Dec 1898)
Minnie & A. J. – Brown (14 Dec 1898)
Conrad – McClennan (9 Jan 1899)
Dick – Hill (16 Jan 1899)
Mark – Kent (26 Jan 1899)
Clara & Orlena & Letitia - Taylor (27 Feb 1899)
Orlena – Taylor (27 Feb 1899)
Leona – Jones (8 Mar 1899)
Frank & J. R. – Jones (15 Mar 1899)
Letitia (no B. F. – not in
Texas?) – Taylor (10 Apr 1899)
Orange indicates the county in which the person had their affidavit notarized. Erasmus and Uncle Ras were still in Brown County as of December 13, 1898. So were Minnie and her husband. Conrad was over in McClennan County (in Waco going to school - we'll talk about that later), and J. R. (a.k.a. Dick) was in Hill County. Mark had either moved to Kent County (just northwest of Fisher on the map above), which might make sense because his older brother Sam was living somewhere near (or on) the border of Kent and Dickens Counties at the time. And here is where things start to get a bit funny (not ha-ha funny, mind you). At the end of February, nearly three months after the deed was transacted, Clara, Orlena, and Letitia all appeared together in Taylor County. On the same day, Orlena, without her husband Frank, had her affidavit notarized. Then, about a week later, Leona appeared to give her statement in Jones County, but without her husband present. He (J. R.) appeared a week later with Orlena's husband Frank, in Jones County. Not in Taylor County. So either Orlena or Frank appeared in a county other than that in which they lived, and I guess J. R. wasn't home when Leona decided to finally get the whole thing over with. Then, in April, exactly four months after the process was begun, Letitia appeared one more time in Taylor County, but without her husband. Letitia's husband, Ben Mallory, was the only husband who was not named as a party to the deed.
So, I have known for some time now that Letitia was living in the town of Merkel, in Taylor County, during 1898. There is evidence that Ben was out of the state at the time that this deed process was taking place. That would have left Letitia alone with seven children, one of whom was born in November of 1898, about a month before the deed was transacted. I wonder if that is why Clara signed in Taylor County - was she living with Letitia at the time to help her out? And what was up with Leona and her husband? (I actually just noticed while proofreading this post that Leona didn't get married until fourteen days after the deed was transacted. If you click on the title of the deed image, you'll get a pdf of all the pages. At the beginning, Leona is named as Leona Owen, but later she is referred to as Leona Turner. Maybe that's why nobody seemed to notice this marriage - they didn't bother to read through the entire deed? This was how I realized that only Edgar and Ras were actually present with Erasmus in Brown County.)
Anyway, why had all of Erasmus' younger children (except Ras and Edgar - who was married years before so doesn't count) moved west while he did not? And the final question is, if all of his other children were gone from home, who was doing the cooking for Erasmus and Uncle Ras?
Were Erasmus and Ras actually still living in Brown County, or were they living in the Taylor/Jones area with the rest of the family, and just went back to sell the land? Maybe they stayed a few days visiting with friends or something, and that is why they didn't have their affidavits notarized until a few days later? Well, the deed begins with "I, E. M. Owens and following named bodily heirs of R. S. Owen deceased wife of E. M. Owen to wit . . . of the County of Brown . . . " which indicates that Erasmus was still a resident of Brown County.
In addition, newspaper articles from 1898 indicate that he had been in Brown County for the entire year of 1898. I might have already shown these to you in a previous post, but I'm too lazy to go back and check so I'm going to put them up now just in case:
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The Baptist Standard
3 March 1898 |
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The Baptist Standard
5 May 1898 |
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The Baptist Standard
14 July 1898 |
Also, as I've shown you all before, Erasmus performed a marriage in Brown County on November 30, 1898 and then one more in August of 1899. Now, I suppose it is possible that Erasmus was in town visiting and those couples, who had been members of his church before he moved, requested that he do the honors while he was there. But that would make the supposed visit that would have coincided with the sale of his land quite long. Plus, if he was living in Jones or Taylor County with his children, why wouldn't he just perform their marriages for them?
Scene 6: In which Erasmus' Health Takes a Turn?
But here is something interesting: It appears that Erasmus' son Edgar was living in the Wolf Valley area by the fall of 1898. According to a timeline of Edgar's life put together by the wife of one of his descendants, one of Edgar's sons was born in Wolf Valley. Although the timeline has a date of 1897 for his birth, his draft card says he was born in August of 1898. And Edgar performed two marriages in Brown County that fall; I didn't recognize either of the surnames from the September marriage, but the October one had a groom whose family lived a mile from Erasmus and whose sister had been married by him several years before.
Was Edgar and his young family living with Erasmus at the time? Was Edgar taking the place of his father as far as the role of minister in the community for some reason? Might that reason have been that Erasmus was ill?
Did Erasmus sell his remaining land because he thought he'd better get that taken care of and give the kids their inheritance without them having to deal with the probate process if he died? Was he not doing well in 1897, then got better by the first half of 1898 and then relapsed again? I saw somewhere online about a year ago that he supposedly had an old injury from the Civil War days that gave him a lot of problems in later life. I don't remember what the injury was or what kinds of problems it gave him - or where I found that info even! Perhaps Erasmus' health took a turn for the worse after Mark left home and he had sent the girls off to stay with him and Letitia. He did perform that marriage in November, just ten days before he sold his land, but maybe that was also a we-really-want-you-to-marry-us-so-could-you-please-this-one-last-time sort of thing.
Why would I speculate that Erasmus was ill? Well, it's because of Conrad. Here are some random pieces of information that I've found for him, in no particular order:
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Morrison & Fourmy's
General Directory of the City of Waco
1900-1901 |
This came from Ancestry. There was a notation on the inside saying that it was received by the Library of Congress on January 8, 1900, which means that the information was gathered in 1899. If you look at the very first entry on the left, it shows that Conrad was a student at Baylor who was boarding in Waco.
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Obituary of Conrad Owen
The Baylor Line
January 1968 |
This came from the Baylor University digital collections. It implies that Conrad attended Baylor in 1902 and 1903, but that is really just one school year. No mention is made of him attending in 1899 or 1900.
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Howard Payne Monthly
4 September 1904 |
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Howard Payne Monthly
4 September 1904 |
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Howard Payne Monthly
4 September 1904 |
These all came from The Portal to Texas History. Notice how Howard Payne said that Conrad had attended some time in the past, and that he had already done two years at Baylor prior to 1904.
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Baylor Bulletin
Ex-Students' Directory 1920 |
This one also came the Baylor University digital collections. On the left-hand column it shows a C. Owen from Cisco (deceased), and a Conrad Owen, also from Cisco, who attended between 1898 and 1900. (This mention of Cisco might be a typo, or it might be a confusion with Rising Star, twenty miles to the south of Cisco but only six miles north of Wolf Valley, where Conrad probably attended high school. The only other C. Owen that I could find of the right age in Cisco was a man named Cornelius, not Conrad.) No mention is made here, however, of Conrad's attendance in later years. Conrad's wife, who also attended Baylor, was listed in this same directory:
There is no Baylor catalogue online for any of the years between 1898 and 1901.
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Baylor University Catalogue
1902-1903 |
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Baylor University Catalogue
1902-1903
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In the 1902-1903 Baylor Catalogue, Conrad (listed as "C. L." - he began using his initials soon after being ordained) was shown as being in his
third year at Academy, and also as a ministerial student. Conrad only attended Howard Payne for one year prior to this, so how did he manage to be in his third and final year of the preparatory program at Baylor? How about because he also went to Baylor during the 1898-1899 school year, making a total of two years' preparatory work prior to the 1902-1903 school year?
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The Abilene Reporter
17 March 1899 |
Hmmm. Mark was living in Hodges, so this must be our Conrad. He could have been living with Mark before he went off to Baylor, or maybe he would go spend his breaks from Baylor there.
And finally, we have this article from The Baptist Standard, dated a week earlier and reporting information provided by Baylor University. Look down near the bottom:
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The Baptist Standard
9 March 1899 |
This says, "Brethren Conrad, Owen and Robinson have been compelled to quit school." I'm pretty sure the comma after the word Conrad is a typo, because the article follows with, "Bro. Owen to wait on his aged father in Brown County. Bro. Robinson by his father's death." So, it only gives an explanation for two students, plus, wouldn't it be a weird coincidence if there were a Bro. Conrad and a Bro. Owen quitting school at the same time, and an even weirder coincidence if one of those students had an aged father in Brown County, just like Conrad Owen himself?
Erasmus would have been nearly sixty-seven years old at the time. Considering how many of those old-timey people had health problems like rheumatism and such with no modern medicine to ease their symptoms, that age could have totally been seen as "aged," even if such a person would go on to live another twenty years.
Remember this photo? The one taken in Brown County where Erasmus looks so very old, even though everything about his attire and the photograph itself indicate that it was taken in the 1890's?
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Erasmus Miller Owen
Brown County, Texas
c. 1897-1899 |
(This is a restored version; I used Photopea to erase the worst of the scratches and the giant crack that was across the entire middle of the photo.)
Remember how I couldn't figure out why he looked much more strong and spry in a photo on a card that, according to the expert I consulted, was clearly dated after 1900? I propose that it is because he was ill at the time that this was taken. He does look frail, doesn't he?
This photo was taken in Brownwood, in Brown County. We know that Erasmus was only living in Brown County until late 1899 or early in the year 1900, at which point he moved to the town of Emma in Crosby County, Texas. He then traveled to Oregon in around 1905-1906, and didn't return until the end of 1909. If you recall, I showed you a newspaper article way back when that said he was very ill when he arrived back in Texas, and "considerable uneasiness" was felt by friends and relatives because he was "aged." He ended up recovering, and not only living for another six and a half years, but doing quite well physically. Check out this article that I was saving to show you later:
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The Texas Spur
25 February 1916 |
See? That was just over a year before he died. Could it be that the end of 1898 - spring of 1899 was just such a situation? Could it be that Erasmus was in poor health, so he decided to sell his land, give his children their inheritance, and get one last portrait before he died? Perhaps Conrad was called home to help take care of his father, or perhaps they all thought Erasmus' death would be coming sooner rather than later and Conrad wanted to spend time with him before he passed on. Perhaps Erasmus then made a miraculous recovery, regained his strength, and went on to live another seventeen years, pastoring multiple churches and even making the move to Oregon during that time.
Maybe the outdated fashion and torn and mended nature of Erasmus' too-big suit in the photo tell the story of the 1890's - a decade of financial ups and downs and loss and grief and illness. Maybe the photo was taken before he sold his land, after having to purchase a headstone for Rhoda and wedding dresses for his daughters when he no longer had an income from pastoring churches. Or maybe it was taken after he sold his land, but when his strength was failing and it didn't make sense to purchase a new suit if the end of his life was near.
Luckily, if he had been extremely ill, he pulled through and made a full recovery.
As the decade came to an end, and the with it the century itself, one era in Erasmus' life ended and a new one began. A widower with only one of his twelve surviving children still living with him, he would leave Brown County - his home for nearly twenty years - and push once more into the Texas frontier before leaving the state altogether for mission work in the Pacific Northwest a few years after that.
But as for those supposed Gay 90's, it doesn't appear to have been a time of carefree merrymaking for the Erasmus Miller Owen family. It hadn't been all bad, though. Despite the various hardships, it had also been a decade filled with triumphs and joy, including the founding of a Baptist college and several new churches, the homecoming of two wayward sons, the education and marriages of several of his children, and the addition of fifteen grandchildren and at least ten great-grandchildren . . . and somehow I don't think that great great (great) grandfather, the strict Baptist preacher, would really have approved much of frivolous gaiety anyway.
- Therese
Here is what the original photo of Mark and Eva looks like:
You see what I was up against - I worked on this for two weeks (which is why this post is so late)! I also cropped it down to just the oval; in case anyone is interested in having a copy, here it is:
(For those of you on Ancestry, both versions are on my tree if you want to attach them easily to your own: Link to Ancestry Person. If anyone would like a higher resolution copy to try your own hand at the editing or to send it off to a professional, contact me and I'll get one over to you.)
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