Let's Talk About Uncle Ras

The Erasmus Miller Owen Family, part 9

Last week we began to examine the story that Erasmus Miller Owen was the acting pastor of the Baptist church in Palouse, Washington in 1916.  This is a story that is floating around out there and, because it was published in the Owen Family Newsletter and the same text appears on his Wikitree entry, many of his descendants have adopted the idea.  (His Wikitree page alone has been accessed well over 200 times.)  However, now that we have access to so many digitized documents, it is probably a good idea to reevaluate a story that seems somewhat less than plausible.

In my last post, I asked the question, What if the Erasmus Owen who was pastoring the Baptist church in Palouse, Washington was actually Erasmus Owen the younger, meaning the son of Erasmus Miller Owen?  We didn't get very far into answering that question, but today we are going to take a step back and just talk about the younger Erasmus Owen, a.k.a. Uncle Ras, for a bit.

Now, those of you who might not have heard any stories about Uncle Ras might be wondering why nobody seemed to consider that the pastor in Washington was him.  Well, I'll tell you.  For my entire life, I've heard the story that Uncle Ras was going to be a preacher, but he got kicked in the head by a horse, leaving him with a stutter.  Unable to preach after the injury, he broke off his engagement with the girl he was going to marry, and he remained a bachelor for the rest of his life.  That's the way I remember it.  But let's check my grandmother's family history just to make sure I am telling it right:

"Our Family"
by Ruth Goldie Cheatham
excerpt from page 25 (typed version)

Yep.  My grandmother clearly wrote that although Uncle Ras did some preaching as a young man, "HE COULD NO LONGER PREACH" after his injury.  

While we are on the subject of that injury, let's take another look at that photo of the Owen brothers.

The Sons of Erasmus Miller Owen
c. 1889/1890

I kept looking at this photo and wondering why Erasmus looked so . . . I don't know, intense?  And then I realized that it is because his eyes are crossed.  And it dawned on me that maybe that was a result of his head injury, since the story goes that he was a young man when it happened and he would have been about 25 years old in this photo.  

So back to the idea that Erasmus had to give up preaching; One would think that my grandmother should have known whether or not this was true.  I mean, she spent some time around him as a child.  She tells in her history about staying with her grandparents - Jack and Clara Owen Maben - for a whole summer one year during the early 1930s, and her family moved right next door to them in 1936, when she was eleven years old.  That means that for nearly ten years (she got married in 1943) she lived right there by Erasmus.  She was something like 21 years old when he died, and she remained living in the same community after she was married, so I would think that she probably attended his funeral when he died in 1946.  Of course, I guess a lot of us don't really pay attention to the adults around us until we have well and truly become adults ourselves. 

Anyway, perhaps other branches of the family that were descended from Erasmus Miller Owen passed down the same story, and that is why some people out there just assumed that the Palouse article must have been referring to Erasmus the elder, because it couldn't possibly have been referring to Erasmus the younger.  Right?

I don't know if Edgar Owen's branch has passed down a similar story about him having to give up preaching, but I did find this on Ancestry:

Uncle Ras had been kicked in the head by a horse when he was a young man and had a steel plate in his head.  He was a strange man.  He lived with the Mabens—Aunt Clara and Uncle Jack—and sometimes with us.  He would go into rages when he was crossed or when his head hurt.  I remember one time at the dinner table he accused Frank of breaking his watch.  Mother defended Frank, of course, and told Uncle Ras that he had done it himself.  Well, that set him off.  Frank and I were sitting on either side of him, and he stood up and grabbed us both by our hair.  Daddy wrestled him out of the house.  He went off and got a big stick and went around the house, breaking all the window screens.  That was the only time I ever heard Mother cry out loud.  She sent us running to the neighbors, the Eldridges, and I don’t know what happened after that.

This is taken from a compilation of the memories of Edgar's daughter Margaret.  The family had lived in a house on the Maben property for nine months during 1931, while Edgar started a Baptist mission in Laveen.  Whether Edgar's children passed down the idea that Uncle Ras quit preaching as a young man or not, they certainly passed down the idea that he was unstable in his later years.  (He would have been 67 that summer.)  Not exactly the personality one would expect of a retired pastor, huh?

I also found something on Ancestry that said Uncle Ras used to always wear a long black coat (or maybe it was a heavy black coat), even in the summertime.  Unfortunately, I can't find it now, because I always just attach those things to the person in my tree who was responsible for the recollection, and not necessarily the person they were remembering.  (Yes, thinking about it now, I do think that was a very dumb way of doing things!)  I'm sure I'll find it again one day when I am all finished with the Owen blog posts, but in the time being, let's look at another paragraph from my grandmother's family history:

"Our Family"
by Ruth Goldie Cheatham
excerpt from page 25 (typed version)

Uh huh.  Definitely a cantankerous old man.  My grandmother also told about an arrangement her father made with Uncle Ras sometime after 1936:

"Our Family"
by Ruth Goldie Cheatham
excerpt from page 25 (typed version)

This tells us that the Maben family (Uncle Ras' sister Clara, her husband Jack, and, by then, only their daughter Clarice), who had lost the property they had been living on during the summer of 1931, were by 1936 renting a house about a mile and a half away.  I suppose that meant that Uncle Ras would probably have been living with them at that time.  My grandmother's dad, Harry Goldie, had built some houses before, and I suppose that is why Uncle Ras offered the trade.  Well, that and maybe the fact that it wasn't easy for anyone, Uncle Ras included, to all be living together.  

Several months ago, I found a deed mixed in with a bunch of old letters that Clara's daughter Clarice (Auntie Babe to my family) had saved:  

Warranty Deed - 1930
Erasmus Owen to C. E. and Helen Pettibone
Maricopa County, AZ

This deed shows that Uncle Ras sold a parcel of land in September of 1930.  Strangely enough, this deed was never recorded.  The back side does not show a recording date and it doesn't come up in a search of recorded documents on the Maricopa County Recorder's website.  But did you notice the date?  That was just about one year before the stock market crash that began the Great Depression.  I did a search for deeds with one party having the Owen surname and discovered that this same piece of land changed hands several times.  From what I could tell, it went something like this:

Uncle Ras bought this piece of land from John C. Rodgers and his wife in May of 1929.

Uncle Ras sold it to the Pettibones in September of 1930; it was never recorded.

Uncle Ras bought an additional approximate acre and a half from Mr. Rodgers in July of 1936.

Uncle Ras sold the original parcel of land to his sister Clara in March of 1937.

Uncle Ras sold the one-ish acre to Clara's daughter - his niece Teresa Goldie - in June of 1940.

Mr. Rodgers recorded a deed granting the land adjoining Uncle Ras' original parcel (it was the whole north section, minus the part that had belonged to Uncle Ras, and not just the NW section, containing somewhere between 16 and 19 acres) to W. J. and Clara Maben in April of 1939.

I think.  

The whole thing was a weird convoluted mess and, even though the deeds don't show payment agreements, I think those must have existed because otherwise none of this makes any sense.  There are actually additional related deeds, like one where the bank released the Mabens and Harry and Teresa Goldie from a mortgage, and I'm thinking that maybe that had something to do with the land that Uncle Ras put into Teresa's name.  I'm also thinking that Uncle Ras' deal with the Pettibones fell through when the depression hit, and that is why the deed was never recorded and he still had the land to sell to his sister later.

If you look at a plat map, you can see that the land sat on the NW quarter of the SW quarter of Township 1S Range 2E:

Maricopa County, AZ
Land Ownership Plat Map - 1929
detail from T1S R2E

For those of you who are familiar with the Laveen area, you will know that the tiny purple triangle shows the approximate area where the Maben and Goldie property was located.  (That is not exactly what I came up with when I tried following the description in the deed, but that is where their houses actually sat.)

As for the land for a house trade, my great-grandfather did build Uncle Ras a house.  It was located just south of the canal, across from the SW tip of the purple triangle on the map.  Here is the only existing photo that I was able to find, and it was taken in much more recent years:

As you can see, the recent property owners had piled excess farm equipment around it.  It wasn't like that when I was growing up, but it was just a shell even way back then.  I can still remember the first time I saw it as a child.  I think that may have been the first time I heard the story of Uncle Ras, and it all struck me as being terribly sad - the abandoned house standing alone and completely gutted by a long-ago fire, and the unfortunate circumstances of Uncle Ras' life.  

My mother just recently showed me a letter written by Uncle Ras to Teresa Goldie; it concerns their land trade agreement and is yet another illustration of his personality in his later years:  

Note Exchanged Between Erasmus Owen and Teresa Goldie, 1940

The first part of the letter was a message to Uncle Ras from Harry Goldie, written down by his wife, Teresa.  Apparently, Uncle Ras had left a note on the Goldie mailbox saying they were late in remitting their final payment for the land, and asking if they needed a reduction in the amount due.  (So, I guess it wasn't an even trade of a house for the land.)  My great-grandfather replied that he did not need a reduction; he would have the money by the sixth of June at the latest.  (He must have paid, because Erasmus finalized the deed on the 26th of June.)  He then had his wife add a post-script (or Teresa added it on her own) reminding Uncle Ras that the Bible warns against not forgiving your brother for a wrong he has committed against you.

I'm sure that was the part that really got to Uncle Ras.  He replied, "Whyd you write that?  Did you not see the point!  It was clear!"  He then went on to "preach" at her and tell her that she was sinning for not silently influencing her husband to do right.  And then he told her not to tell her husband or anyone else (like maybe her mother, Uncle Ras' sister Clara?) what he had written to her!  

Holy moly.  Well, that little exchange sure seems to fit with the picture we have been forming of a less-than-stable, angry old man (he would have been about 76 years old by that time).  However, it also fits the picture of a less-than-stable, angry old man who had formerly been a preacher, doesn't it?  And not one who had been a sort-of-trying-to-be preacher way back fifty years before.  More like somebody who spent a good part of his life preaching.  

Well, I now feel a little bad that I put his note online for the whole world to see!  But, I think I can do a good turn and share with you some of the letters that were exchanged between his siblings that mentioned him.  I've had the letters for years - way back when my Auntie Babe was giving away her belongings in preparation for moving in with my parents, she had called my sisters and me over to her house.  She began taking random items and small boxes from within the cupboards in her bedroom, and she pulled out two very large bundles of very old letters and said, "Well, I suppose nobody would want these old things."  Let me tell you, my hand shot up like I was a nine-year-old schoolgirl and I fairly cried, "I do!"  So she handed them to me, and I can't even tell you how amazing that was.  

It turned out that the letters were mostly WWII letters written to Clara Owen Maben from her three children.  Tucked in here and there, however, were a few letters from Conrad, the youngest brother of Clara and Uncle Ras, and also from their sister Orlena.  I had only read one of the letters, from Conrad to Clara, before starting this blog or my research into the family of Erasmus Miller Owen so I knew there was an issue with taking care of Uncle Ras, but I wasn't aware of the extent of the problem.  

The earliest letter that was in the stack was from Orlena to Clara:

Letter from Orlena Owen Harris
to Clara Owen Maben
January 3, 1944

This is the third page, and it mentions Uncle Ras about halfway down.  (You can find a pdf of the entire letter by clicking on the image subtitle.)  Orlena asked if Ras didn't move to stay with their brother Conrad.  She also said that she wished some of the siblings could move out to Arizona to help Clara with him.  This tells me that he was a lot for Clara to handle by herself.  Of course, he had been living either with or near her for something like fifteen years by that point, and was obviously something of a problem since the beginning.  Clara herself would have been nearly 71 years old when this letter was written, so I can only imagine how hard of a time she was having.

This next letter, from Conrad, was dated December of 1944, almost a year later:

Letter from Conrad Owen
to Clara Owen Maben
December 22, 1944

This entire letter is about the problem with Uncle Ras, which after a whole year still had not been solved.  Conrad said, "I certainly understand your problem, because I had it for so many years."  This tells us that Erasmus had been a burden on Conrad's family even before he moved to Arizona to live near Clara.  Conrad suggested that either he and his wife move to Laveen, or that Clara move with Uncle Ras to Nevada so that the two of them could help each other out with Ras' care.  He wrote, "I think you can easily understand why I wouldn't think of taking her into his house to live.  She isn't very well herself and to place her where she would feel that he had a measure of authority over her would create an impossible situation."   The "her" he was referring to was his wife, Elizabeth.  After having read all of the letters completely, I think he was worried that Uncle Ras would feel like he could boss Elizabeth around.  Conrad mentioned that it would be hard for either of them to find a place to live if they moved, so he also offered the suggestion that they find someone who could live with Erasmus in his own home to take care of him, or that they try to find somewhere else for him to live.  

This next letter is my favorite.  It offers us a rare and astounding glimpse into the situation, as well as to the character of Uncle Ras himself.  The letter is long - five pages - but I think I am going to put the whole thing up here anyway, so that any of you who might be reading this on a phone can read it right away without having to download and open the pdf that will be linked to the subtitle under the image of the envelope.

Letter from Conrad Owen
to Clara Owen Maben
January 30, 1945

Okay.  That was a lot.  I am not going to summarize all of the points Conrad made.  You should really, really read it yourself.  I will just give this very brief summary: Conrad told Clara that he believed that each sibling's primary responsibility was to their own immediate family, and that it was "unfair, unjust and completely unworthy" of the rest of them to allow Clara to continue to put Uncle Ras above her family, especially since she had been doing it for twenty years already.  He also said that Letitia should not be asked to help "owing to her age and the things she has done in the past," which implies that maybe she had taken on some of the responsibility for caring for Uncle Ras earlier in his life.  As for himself, Conrad told Clara that he was willing to help however he could, even though he had taken Ras as his "personal responsibility" for the first 15 or so years of his married life, and even though he had done so at great cost to himself and his family.  His proposal for dealing with the situation was to keep Ras living near one of his siblings, but to have someone not related move in to take care of him in his own home.  The only alternative he could see to that was to have him involuntarily committed, which he thought would be painful for the entire family.

Conrad spent two whole paragraphs describing his brother's shortcomings and virtues.  He used the words "excellence" and "inner attainment" to describe Ras' character, and went on to say that

"he has made the most profound impression in my life of any man I have ever known including even our father.  The best in the characters of both father and mother were imparted to him."

Conrad lamented that Ras allowed these traits to "be marred by his attitude toward his sufferings and some of the results which they have produced in his life."  I am thinking that Ras had become bitter and resentful over his disability and the persistent pain, and probably also over the fact that he chose to end his engagement, leaving him all alone.  As he entered old age and reflected back over the years of his life, he probably had a lot of regret and anger over the way things turned out.  I am also thinking that he might have had dementia for a good portion of his later adult years, since traumatic brain injuries increase the risk of developing dementia between two and four-fold.  That, combined with a deep-seated anger at his circumstances, could certainly explain the fits of rage and aggression toward others.

I find Conrad's assessment interesting, in that he blamed a lot of his brother's attitude problems on the fact that Ras believed his siblings had an obligation to take care of him first and foremost.  I suppose, since he was never married and had no children, that he was incapable of understanding the concept of leaving one's family to join with a spouse and create a new family of one's own.  I'm sure this lack of perspective was a large part of the problem he had become.

By the time I am writing this, I have read hundreds of newspaper articles about Uncle Ras and Conrad, and it appears that Conrad was a very gifted evangelistic preacher, having led more than 500 people to Christ by the time he was forty years old.  For him to praise Uncle Ras' insights into the scriptures is quite a compliment, I think, and this poignant letter allows us a glimpse of his better self, so that he can be remembered as the whole complicated person that he was, and not simply as a victim of a tragic accident who ended up as a crazy and violent old man.

The final letter in the stack was written not quite two months later:

Letter from Conrad Owen
to Clara Owen Maben
March 23, 1945

In this letter, Conrad apologized to Clara that his attempt to ease her burden hadn't produced the desired effect with their siblings, but that he was still going to keep trying.  If you open the pdf of this letter, there are two postcards attached to the document; both are addressed to Clara and were in the envelope with the letter.  One is from Orlena, and the other from Leona.  Neither one made any mention of Ras.

I don't know how things finally panned out.  It would be about nine more months before Uncle Ras died, and as far as I know Clara bore the burden of his care until he passed.  Here is a copy of his obituary and also the inside of his funeral program:

The Arizona Republic
16 January 1946

Funeral Program of Erasmus Owen
1864-1946

Both of these documents refer to Uncle Ras as Rev. Erasmus Owen.  That means that he was ordained at some point in his life, either as a young man "trying to preach" or some time later after his injury.  As I mentioned before, I've spent most of the past week reading newspaper articles so I know approximately when the ordination took place, but we are going to hold that until next time, when we look at the newspaper articles and settle once and for all the question of exactly which Erasmus Owen was preaching in Washington in 1916.  

                                                                                                                                                 - Therese

But wait!  Before we go, here are some photos of Uncle Ras:

Erasmus Owen
c. late 1890's

Erasmus Owen
c. early 1900's

Uncle Ras and Sister, Clara 
c. early 1940's