The Erasmus Miller Owen Family, part 12
When I was a kid, my sisters and I used to play a game called "Fortunately, Unfortunately." Does anyone out there know what I mean? You just sit around and take turns making up a story together that goes something like this:
One day I was flying in an airplane over a remote area in Montana. Unfortunately, the plane's engine stopped mid-flight. Fortunately, I had a parachute, and was able to jump out of the plane before it crashed. Unfortunately, my parachute got caught in a tree, and I was left dangling thirty feet off the ground. Fortunately, the parachute ripped and came free of the tree. Unfortunately, I fell thirty feet. Fortunately, I hit enough springy branches on my way down, that I landed without breaking any bones. Unfortunately, I was lost in the middle of nowhere with no supplies.
Sometimes, that's how research goes, folks.
Remember back several weeks ago, when I was talking about going down the rabbit hole, I showed you that search result I got on the FamilySearch book page that showed E. M. Owen preaching a sermon on the first day of some kind of get-together, but I couldn't view it online because it was protected? My first instinct was to say Murphy's Law is alive and well! But, looking on the bright side, at least the search result let me know that I should start looking for Erasmus Miller Owen in places other than San Saba or Brown County. I have since done a lot, and I mean a lot of searching for another copy of that journal, mostly with no success. I pretty much get no hits from my Google searches. I took another look at the catalog entries on FamilySearch and discovered that all of the editions of that genealogical journal are housed at the Pocatello Idaho FamilySearch Library. And I said to myself, Drat. That's in Idaho, an hour's drive from Idaho Falls. Oh! My sister lived near Idaho Falls for a few years! Alas, she no longer lives there. Drat again. Oh! But she was just up there visiting a couple of months ago . . . After I knew I needed this, but before I knew where it was. Drat and double drat!
So there I was last week, doing another search for Plainview, Texas, the town mentioned in the journal title, and I must have put in some new search term with the town name, because I came across this:
This is a page from a blog by Phyllis Wall, the president of the Hale County Historical Commission. This isn't the edition I need, but I did discover that a couple of years ago they were trying to locate and acquire as many copies of the journal as they could. I'm going to try and contact them and see if they have the one I need and would be willing to scan the pages for me. (I'll let you know how it goes.)
On the same day, I was on the Baylor University Digital Collections website, looking to see if there was any mention of Erasmus Miller Owen in Oregon. I got nine hits for my search (none of which were about Oregon), seven from 1898-1902, one from 1914, and one from 1990. I looked at the first eight and found them helpful. I wasn't even going to look at the last one, because surely a 1990 reference must be about an entirely different person, but I told myself I had better take a look anyway. Just in case.
Always look!
This is what I saw:
O.M.G. Did any of you get as excited as I did when you read that just now? Now, I already knew that Erasmus Miller Owen had been in the town of Emma, because I had come across that information in a couple places, even though I haven't had a chance to share it all with you yet. This was cool for three reasons; first, it told me that E. M. Owen was the pastor of the church there, second, it told me during which years, and third, it told me that Ima Jean Powell was doing research on our guy. Now, you might be saying so what if Ima Jean Powell was doing research on our guy? Well, this was 1990. The church in Emma was founded in something like 1891. That means that Mrs. Powell was probably putting together a 100-year-history-of-the-church-thing. But then I thought to myself, this query was published thirty years ago!
I wondered if Mrs. Powell ever found a photo of Erasmus. I wondered if she was still at that church. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could contact the church and talk to Mrs. Powell and who knows what kind of information they might have that they could share with me!
I looked up both the church and Ima Jean Powell. And this is what I found:
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| Obituary of Ima Jean Powell |
Unfortunately, Ima Jean Powell had passed away . . . three months ago. How's that for Murphy's Law? This does say, however, that she wrote a church history, so maybe the church still has a copy, and maybe they have a digital copy, or maybe they can send me a paper copy . . . . I'll let you know how that goes, too.
In the meantime, I'm going to need something to fill out this post! How about we take a look at all of the American Baptist Year-book editions for the Texas listings? We might as well get that out of the way, plus I think it might be helpful for next week's post. There are actually more than thirty editions that I've pulled information from, which is obviously way too many to put up here. (You wouldn't believe how long it takes to look up, save, insert, caption, and link a single image for this blog.) Luckily, I took notes in my research journal when I first looked through all of the books, so I ought to be able to get this post up on time this week if I just list them out like I did with the information in the last post.
So, here goes:
I think every branch of the family has heard the story that Erasmus Miller Owen was a circuit-riding-Methodist-preacher-turned-Baptist-minister, but I didn't know when that conversion was supposed to have taken place. So, I began looking as far back as I could find the books, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
Ordained Ministers in Texas:
1873: no Owens
1874: E. Owens - Bonham
1875: E. Owens - Bonham
1876: E. Owens - Bonham
Fortunately, I got a hit for a Baptist Minister with the right first initial and last name. Unfortunately, there are three problems: Erasmus Miller Owen always used his middle initial; Bonham, Texas is in Fannin County, way up in northeastern Texas; and as far as we know, our E. M. Owen was living in San Saba County - way over in west central Texas - during the 1870s. But how can we know for sure? Fortunately, I found this on a rootsweb page:
903. Horace W.10 Hunt (68) (Richard9, Horace8, Gad7, Simeon6, Ebenezer5, Jonathan4, Thomas3, Thomas2, Thomas1) was born on 14 Dec 1849 at Bonham, Fannin County TX. He married Frances Elender Irick (87) on 15 Feb 1872 at Choctaw Nation (Married by W.J.B. Lloyd,Chocktaw Nation- joining the Missionary Baptist Church. Baptised by Elder E. Owens). He died on 23 Jun 1934 at Lamasco, Fannin County, Texas, at age 84. He was buried at Fannin County, Texas.
In July 1881 they joined the Missionary Baptist Church and were baptized in Baisdark Creek, Fannin County TX by Elder E. Owens.
Yeah. I don't think this is our guy.
1877-1882: no surviving volumes
Unfortunately, none of the three libraries that have had their holdings digitized by Google (Harvard, University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library) seem to have retained a copy for those six years.
E. M. Owen - Clio
Honey Grove is a town in Fannin County. So there we have the E. Owens from above. Clio was a town in Brown County. That is consistent with what we already know about Erasmus Miller Owen's whereabouts. But . . . . I found E. M. Owen on another page:
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| American Baptist Year-book, 1883 |
E. M. Owen was ordained in Bend, Texas, a community on the San Saba and Lampasas County border, in 1882! Very, very, fortunately, the digitized issues picked up again with this year! And look what I just stumbled across two days ago:
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| The San Saba News 11 Feb 1882 |
Unfortunately, I don't even remember how I managed to find this. But fortunately, it is on the Chronicling America website, and I kept the tab open on my computer. Unfortunately, if you want to download the whole page, it saves it as a jpg2, which my (and maybe your) computer can't view. Fortunately, I uploaded it to an online converter, and changed it to a regular jpg, so if anyone wants a copy of the whole page of the newspaper, it can be found and downloaded here.
Okay. Back to the yearbooks!
1884: E. M. Owen - Clio
1885: E. M. Owen - Clio
A. H. Owens - Clayton
Unfortunately, we can't be absolutely certain whether Erasmus Miller Owen was actually in Clio all this time or not. Remember, if the church or association that served the Clio area did not send in a report, the book just published the last known information. As for this other Owens, guy, he was way over in east Texas. I've only been able to find references to him in Baptist publications.
1887: E. M. Owen - May
Aha! Fortunately, we can be absolutely certain that Erasmus Miller Owen was in the town of May near the end of 1886, because this is a change from what was published in the previous year.
1888: E. M. Owen - Dodd
Dodd? That is a town I never came across in any of my research so far. Unfortunately, the internet only wants to tell me about a Dodd in Castro County, waaaaaay up in the Texas panhandle, and a Dodd City that is in Fannin County. Hmmmm. That's where that E. Owens guy was. Either there was a town of Dodd in Brown County that I can't find any information about, or this is not our guy.
1889: E. M. Owens - Bonham
A. H. Owens - Teneha
A. H. Owens - Teneha
Aaaaahhh. Fortunately, we now see an E. M. Owens in Bonham, a town in Fannin County 15 miles from Honey Grove, where E. Owens had a church. So, this is probably the same man as the one who was in Dodd. Unfortunately, that means that our E. M. Owen is nowhere to be found. Fortunately, we already know exactly where he was, because these are the years that he was sitting around in Brown County starting Howard Payne College. (As for that A. H. Owens who mysteriously shows up again, Teneha is in north east Texas, and I still haven't been able to find him in any non-Baptist records. And now that I come to think of it, I can't find this other E. M. Owens either! Weird, right?)
A. H. Owens - Teneha
Unfortunately, I am more than a bit confused. I am starting to wonder if the publishers were confused. It appears that there were two E. M. Owens/Owenses (Uuuggghh. Why can nobody get this straight?), one in Brown County and one in eastern Texas. But where did the other guy go? And why was our guy not listed the previous four years? Perhaps the people putting together the book thought this was the same man so they just picked one location or the other?
1893: E. M. Owens - MayOh, brother! Fortunately, we see Erasmus Miller Owen back where we expect him to be. Unfortunately, we now see this other strange Owens guy in the same town where our guy had been, only nine miles south of the town of May. But just wait for the next one . . . .
A. H. Owens - May
Okay. Fortunately, we know that this Edgar was Erasmus Miller Owen's son, because both locations listed for him were in Gillespie County, and that is where he married his wife in 1893. Unfortunately, we now see both our guy, E. M. Owen, and that other guy, A. H. Owens, in the exact same place. Who was this guy? A cousin? A nephew? Some random preacher with an almost the same last name?
A. H. Owens - Bynum
Edgar Owen - Johnson City
Fortunately, E. M. Owen is still shown in May. Unfortunately, we don't know if that is really accurate or not. A. H. Owens was supposedly in Bynum, a town in Hill County, Texas, which is nowhere near Brown County. Fortunately, we don't really care about him so it doesn't matter. (In fact, I am going to stop listing him now.) Unfortunately, this makes me wonder if the publication made a lot of mistakes while recording and typesetting lists containing thousands of names (I did the math - there were approximately 22,600 names listed!), so I don't know how trustworthy this information really is. (And the book claims to be "if not complete," at least "accurate"!)
Edgar Owen - May
Edgar Owen - Waldrip
Edgar Owen - Waldrip
Edgar Owen - May
Edgar Owen - May
Edgar Owen - May
Edgar Owen - May
Edgar Owen - Stacey
Edgar Owen - Stacey
Edgar Owen - Stacey
There, finally, we see E. M. Owen in Emma! This shows that he was there by the end of 1902 and at least until the end of 1904. And then, in 1905, he is back in Brown County, in the town of Bangs. So fortunately, we know that we can trust some of these entries. Unfortunately, without corroborating evidence, in many case we don't know which ones we can trust!
Also, look what's going on with that Conrad - I assumed that was Erasmus Miller Owen's son, but then in 1905 we see both Conrad and C. L., who was in Goldthwaite. We know for sure from other sources that C. L. was Erasmus' son Conrad Luther, and that he was in Goldthwaite in 1905, so I don't know who the other Conrad was. Once again, not a super common name, so maybe he was a relative.
And just a disclaimer - for these entries from the 1900s, I am not showing all of the Owens/Owenses; there were eleven different men with the last name listed for Texas.
Edgar Owen - Stacey
Edgar Owen - Stacey
Edgar Owen - Snyder
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