The Not-So-Gay 90's - Act One: Setting the Stage

The Erasmus Miller Owen Family, part 18

Ah, the Gay 90's.  

A time of gaslights, Gibson Girls, and gramophones; Coca-Cola, fountain pens, and toilet paper; puffy sleeves, puffy hairdos, and puffy-bloomered cycling suits.  

But what about sickness, death, runaway sons, and . . . lice?

Although the 1890s is remembered as an idyllic period of transition from the stuffy Victorian era to the carefree new century, full of advances in technology and the promise of great things to come, for Erasmus Miller Owen, it wasn't all fun and games. 

From the very first day of the decade, he was faced with one challenge after another.  But to understand some of those difficulties, we need to backtrack a bit into the later 1880s.

SCENE 1: In which Uncle Ras Sustains a Traumatic Head Injury

The start of the decade found Erasmus and his family living in the town of May, in Brown County, Texas.  The Baptist records show him there beginning in 1887, and then, after a break in the records of four years, pick him up there again in 1892.  The tax records confirm this to be correct; they show that he both sold and purchased land in that area in 1888:

Detail of Brown County, Texas Survey Map

This map shows the northeastern portion of Brown County, and although it is dated 1888, it was actually originally created in 1884.  This is important, because this version has no name in the teal box, but by the 1910 version it shows the original grantee, which is how I was able to identify it as a section in which Erasmus owned land. (I had to use this version of the map because it was the only one that allowed me to blow it up big enough to read the names as I color-coded it.)  

Anyway, up at the top you can (barely!) see the red star indicating the town of May, which is actually the location of the town center.  According to the Texas Escapes website, 

The May Community

Originally part of a Mexican land grant given to empresario John Cameron in 1827, May developed in the 1870s when several pioneer families settled here. Baptists and Methodists quickly organized churches. A one-room school known as Old Swayback provided the first formal education for the children. Nathan L. May built a trading post in 1879 and became the town's first postmaster in 1881. By 1907 the village had a blacksmith shop, general store, newspaper and bank. The early history of May climaxed in 1911 with the coming of the railroad.
(1981)

The census data shows that in 1890 the entire precinct that included all of the land around May and three other "towns" (which really just means post offices) only contained about 2,000 people altogether.  So, May wasn't really a bustling center of commercial activity.  In fact, it would have been in its infancy when Erasmus moved there in 1882, and probably hadn't grown all that much in the following six years.

The tax records show that some time in 1888, Erasmus sold his 190 acres of land located in the green and teal sections, and then purchased just 80 acres somewhere in the section that I coded purple.  Not only did he cut his acreage down by more than half, but he reduced the value of his taxable property from $1723 to only $880.  So what happened?  

Well, I'm sure you all remember this photo:

The Sons of Erasmus Miller Owen

I've estimated the date for the photo to be 1889 or 1890, primarily based on the probable ages of the two youngest boys, so this would have been taken a year or two after Erasmus sold his land.  This would have also been taken, according to my reckoning, some time after Uncle Ras sustained his injury from the kick to his head.  Here is a breakdown of my reckoning in case anyone is wondering:

Crossed eyes in photo + family story that he was a young man trying to be a preacher + family story that he broke off his engagement + census bureau data that the average/median(?) age at first marriage in 1890 was 26 for men + his birth date of 1864 + the sale of the family land = 1888 as a likely year for his accident.

Uncle Ras would have turned 24 in September of 1888, which fits all of the details of the family story.  His head injury was such that a section of bone the size of a child's fist was crushed and had to be replaced with a metal plate.  I would think that such an operation would have had to have been performed in a hospital.  As far as I could find from my Google searching, the closest hospital at the time was in the city of Austin.  

(And for the curious, that's more than 200 miles away from the town of Brownwood - twenty miles south of May but the closest train depot at the time - which would take two hours by train at a straight shot, but more like seven with all of the stops in between.  Of course, there is evidence that Uncle Ras had remained in San Saba County when his father moved to Brown County, in which case he would have faired much better, only having to travel about fifteen miles to the town of Lometa, and then about another 65 miles to Austin.)  

Such an operation combined with a hospital stay and train fare might have resulted in a pretty hefty bill, wouldn't you think?  Perhaps Uncle Ras' injury played a big part in Erasmus' decision to sell his land and downsize his holdings.

So, as the 1890s approached, Erasmus Miller Owen was left with diminished financial assets as well as the addition to his household of an adult son who was recovering from a debilitating accident.

SCENE 2: In Which Howard Payne College is Founded

In the 1889 annual of the Texas General Convention, the following was printed regarding home missions:

As discussed previously, Erasmus appears to have had a passion for missions, first as a Methodist circuit-riding preacher, and then as a Baptist Minister on the frontier.  In 1889, he and other like-minded men took this passion a step further:

The Dallas Morning News
25 February 1889

Fort Worth Daily Gazette
1 July 1889

The Pecan Valley Baptist association included churches from several different counties, including Brown.  As we will see in a few minutes, it is likely that Erasmus was a member of the executive board, and that he was present at both of the meetings mentioned in these articles.  The June meeting at Indian Creek is considered the founding of Howard Payne College.  I've already shared the page from the 1890-91 catalog of the college in an earlier post; it revealed that Erasmus Miller Owen was a member of the college board in that year.  But to get a fuller picture of just how that came about, as well as what it entailed, requires us to peruse several different versions of the college's history:

The Lasso - 1913

That gave a pretty good summary of things, but take a look at these:

Howard Payne Yellow Jacket
8 March 1934
page 1

Howard Payne Yellow Jacket
8 March 1934
page 3

Howard Payne Yellow Jacket
15 March 1934
page 3

I tried clipping out the individual article but it was too complicated to do, so instead I put a link in the title to the zoomable page on The Portal to Texas History website.  If you decided not to read them because they are so long, I would really reconsider that decision - they give a fantastic picture of what Brown County was like when Erasmus moved his family there in 1882.

Now, here is one I really like, because not only is it interesting, but it provides a clearer explanation about how Erasmus came to be on the board of the college:

Howard Payne Yellow Jacket
3 December 1938
page 4

(Of course, we are only supposed to be talking about the end of the 1880s, and these articles discuss the whole history of the school up until the 1930s, but putting up them up in their entirety seemed a much better plan than quoting all of the relevant paragraphs.)  

Most of the histories simply state that an original board was chosen, and that Erasmus was later selected as a replacement.  This article, however, makes it clear that the original board was always meant to be temporary, and in fact only lasted for a couple of months.  An excerpt from the book Something About Brown by T. R. Havins (I found this on Google Books by searching for "pecan valley."  It never showed up in any of my searches for Brown County or Texas Baptist history!) sheds even more light on how events played out:

Aha.  This says that each church elected one member to the executive board.  Since Erasmus was the pastor of the church at May, and since he was given the honor and responsibility of serving on the board of the new college, it is likely that he was the representative chosen by his church.  This also implies that the temporary board elected in June was only intended to be in place until the annual meeting in September, at which time a new board was elected.  I'm still a bit confused over whether Erasmus replaced a temporary board member who resigned and was then elected to the permanent board in September, or whether he was chosen as a replacement some time after the permanent board was established.  Whichever it was, it sounds like he was on the board well before the school ever opened.  And according to the "Old Timer" who provided the information to the reporter in the article up above, Erasmus and his fellow board members "were the real fathers of Howard Payne."  Their dedication and hard work was what made the dream a reality.

So, as the end of 1889 approached, Erasmus Miller Owen found himself on the first board of directors for a brand new college - a hefty responsibility to be sure.

SCENE 3: In Which the Family Must Face . . . Another Round of Lice?

Scroll back up to the 1889/1890 photo of Erasmus' sons.  What do you notice about the hair?  All three of the sons who we know were living in Erasmus' household at the time have very short hair; short hair like it had been shaved and was barely growing out.  Now compare this detail of Conrad with the photo of his sisters taken c. 1883:

Conrad Owen
c. 1889/1890

Minnie & Clara Owen
c. 1883

According to my grandmother, her grandmother, Clara, recounted that her hair was so short in the photo because she had had to have all of it cut off because of lice.  Ouch.  And in the first year living in Brown County no less!  It looks like Minnie faired a little better, since she got to keep her bangs, but can you imagine if they had passed it on to their father and he had needed to have his beard combed through for nits?

Erasmus Miller Owen
c. 1890

I wonder how many other times the family had to deal with such a problem.  Was it fairly often, or were the kids just unfortunate enough to have their portraits taken in the aftermath?

So.  As the family headed into the 1890s, they were trying to put the lice incident behind them, they were caring for a recovering brother/son, and Erasmus was busier than ever with the added responsibility of helping to start a college from scratch.  But, as we will discover next time, if they thought they were headed for easier times soon, they were going to be disappointed because things were going to get worse before they got better.

                                                                                                                                                 - Therese

(Disclaimer about the title of this post:  There is much debate as to whether or not an apostrophe is needed when naming a decade using numerals followed by the letter "s."  For most of my life, it was standard to include the apostrophe.  Apparently, it is now considered correct to omit the apostrophe; some of you may have noticed that I have begun to do so in my recent posts.  However, the title of this post just looked strange that way, so I decided to revert back to the old standard for the title.)