The Murder of John Sunday

"Every journey into the past is complicated with delusions, false memories, false names of real events"...Adrienne Rich 

I came across the mention of the Sunday family when I was peering into the life of Charles Pinkney Owens.  He married a Charlotte Sunday, John's youngest daughter, whose birth records did not match with her marriage records, specifically her name and age were off slightly.  She is listed on the license as Charlotte Sundike and her age did not list her at her tender 13 years but made her 16 years old. As years passed Pinkney's wife referred to herself as Charlotte Sunday Owens, so there is no doubt of her lineage.   All this was good and golden as approved by the justice of the peace who married them and signed the license, the honorable WSB Owens.  
John Sunday, whose people were from Holland, was the owner of the Sunday plantation in Escambia, Florida Territory.  One of his daughters, Barbara, was married to Elijah McCurdy.  This is important because McCurdy was in the infantry with Joseph Owens in the war of 1812.  McCurdy and Joseph and John Sunday were friends I suspect and I read somewhere that John Sunday also was found at the Navy Yard in Pensacola, the same yard where Joseph Owens worked. 
 In 1832, The month before their marriage, Pink Owens and Charlotte Sunday had a beautiful baby girl, so one could deduce that the happy couple biblically knew each other prior to filing the record of the marriage.  It wasn't too long after that  Pink, WSB Owens and Elijah Mccurdy were made executers of John Sunday's will. 
I like to think of John Sunday as a free thinker, though he was a slave owner, he had more liberal thoughts on the matter.  After his children were older, his wife became ill.  He purchased two slaves to nurse his wife back to health.  The slaves were Jinny Rosa and Jinny's mother.  Jinny Rosa was said to be beautiful.  I read a description of her that she was too fair skinned to be in the slave quarters and too black to be in the main house. She had green eyes and light hair.  She was so beautiful she would make any white wife uncomfortable and so she was sold several times and finally ended up at the Sunday plantation.
John's wife succumbed to her illness and was buried by her adoring family.  John Sunday kept Jinny and her mother working in the house.  

Legend had it that he fell madly in love with Jinny.  He eventually lived openly with her and had four children (Harrison, Amanda Merced, David and John) by her which also lived in the house.  For her birthday, when asked what she wanted for a gift, Jinny did the unheard of and asked for her freedom and the freedom of her children and any children she would have in the future.  It was a spoken request that could have gotten her killed, but to everyone's surprise, John Sunday granted her wish and filed for her manumission papers for Jinny and their children within that week.  
Florida was changing, the Seminole Indian war was ended.  Creoles and freemen were taking their place in society and the talk on everyones' tongues were of states rights and slavery.   
Not everyone was in agreement with Sunday's turn of heart.  
Much speculation as to the events that occurred a year later lay heavily connected with the freeing of Jinny and her children.  So as I relate the story, it is of my understanding of it, based off of the few records that I could read of the events occurring in the years to follow. I hope to one day disprove this, but grant me this time to lay the words down so that I can mull them over, like one 
consider a bitter wine difficult to swallow.  
One evening as John was enjoying the company of his young children by the fireplace, without warning, was shot in the head.  According to testimony, a slave named Andrew drew a pistol worth ten dollars and shot John Sunday between the eyes.    
Immediately making the papers, the story drew great attention.  There was a trial of young Andrew where he was convicted of murder and was hanged. As WSB Owens assumed the estate as the executor, he removed Jinny and her children from the house to his own plantation, in the slave quarters. During the unrest, it all seemed logical, but no documents can answer my questions:  

• why was Charles Pinkney and WSB Owens on the grand jury that indicted Andrew?  
• Where did a slave purchase a $10 gun (now days that would be like a person with no income purchasing an object worth $242 according to the measuringworth.com calculator)? 
• The laws in Florida in 1831 strictly forbid any black (free or slave) to own a firearm.  So who would sell it to him and how did he become so proficient with it that he could get off a head shot?  

In the trial, Andrew professed his innocence and continued up until he was hung.  Seeing that the whole murder was ill investigated and  it was just months after the death of John Sunday, Pink Owens and WSB Owens began liquidating the Sunday plantation, that I began to ponder the role of the Owens boys in the murder of the Sunday patriarchal head.  
An underaged Charlotte gets pregnant and weds Charles Pinkney Owens.  Pink and WSB and Mccurdy becomes executers to the will and then shortly after Jinny was freed, John was shot by a slave, who was hanged immediately after trial.  During 1839-1841, the Sunday estate was liquidated.
It was noted that McCurdy had made some statements that made one think that he was interested in protecting Sunday's white children's inheritance.  There are countless records of lawsuits being filed on behalf of the dead John Sunday by the Owens' to collect any debt owed the plantation.  Then all property seems to be sold off (over $30,000), the white Sunday boys got $1500 each approximately and Jinny and her children were taken to the Owens plantation to live back in slave quarters.  It all is circumstantial but doesn't it smell of a plot. No one knows what happened to the $30,000.  It was a decade later that 39 Owens family members left Florida for the Gulf Coastal Plains of Texas, on a ship they owned.    
On a side note:
Jinny, with the help of her dear friend, filed a complaint against WSB Owens in the Florida court saying that she and her children were free and that she had been kidnapped by WSB Owens.  After she produced her manumission papers, she won her and her family's freedom and WSB went subsequently unpunished.  She later sought the Parish Bishop's blessing and was granted the first catholic church for blacks and creoles, so they could participate in the worship. 

At first, I thought that Jinny's children could be the Griffin children, and their names changed by Owens, but Harrison (Jinny's oldest) later became a well respected cabinet maker and carpenter in Florida, and the other children had successful lives in Florida.  
Following WSB and Pink Owens like I have, would it surprise me to know that they would kill John Sunday and use the money to better their situation? That they would devise a way to get onto Sunday's will by using a vulnerable 12 or 13 year old daughter? That they would steal an inheritance away from the Sunday children, providing only a pittance and a schooling?  As the plot thickens, I recognize his cold hearted ways.  I believe he or Pink or Elijah McCurdy murdered John Sunday and reaped all the rewards.  It leads me no closer to the Griffin children and their mother. With the plantation liquidated by 1841, that would have put Horace 4 or five years old.  I do not believe that the Griffin children came from the Sunday plantation, per say.  I think the timeline would not fit their ages.  But as I continue to thumb through the dusty tombs, I continue to redefine my image of my ancestors with a jaundiced eye of a researcher with modern idealisms.  

Joseph Owens, the man and the mystery

Joseph Owens, the first and only picture I have seen

The only reasons to really discuss Joseph Owens, the patriarchal head of the family, is because he was one of the moving forces from North Carolina to South Carolina, to Florida and then to Texas.  I often pondered why he would pick up a young family from territory that he carved out his livelihood with sweat and blood and move again into uncharted, unsettled territories.  Then once this land was settled, move again with unheard of costs of land, possessions and lives.  I read an excerpt from a family narrative that he had heard of the gold rush in California and was making his way from Florida to California when he landed in Texas.  It is just speculation, but after fighting the War of 1812 as a young man and the Seminole Indian wars in Florida as a middle-aged man, perhaps it is possible he was ready to stop fighting and actually settle down. Crossing from Texas to California in a wagon and ox carts does not really seem so appealing, knowing one would encounter Apache, Comanches, illness and injuries.  Perhaps Texas appealed to him as it did WSB Owens with its "wide open fields of waving grass, its plentiful wild life" and the wide, colorful skies.  

The facts known of Joseph Owens are few.  There was family speculation and narrative that suggested his father was killed in the Revolutionary War.  Another narrative is that three brothers immigrated from Wales to the Carolinas, enrollee through Barbados, then to Charleston.    I know with some uncertainty that he was born in North Carolina and from there moved to Orangeburg, South Carolina with a father that may be named William Owens.  Here in Charleston, SC he met his wife Elizabeth Bennett, the niece of the famous Governor Thomas Bennett.  

Governor Bennett House at Christmas

The Bennett plantation still exists and I find it intoxicatingly  beautiful.  If one can get over the fact that humans were sold, killed, hung and beaten on this land, then you can rent it out for weddings and celebrations.  That being said, it is lovely and it calls to me.  Forgive me, but knowing my great great great grandmother spent her Christmas in this house draws me to it.  I do recognize that it was not all sweet tea and peaches.  It is this love of history that pushes me to look for Cherry Ann so that we can all know our ancestors.   As I strive to find her, I find my ancestors and my connection to land I have not laid eyes upon.  

Beautiful Bride At the Governor Bennett house

This unknown man Joseph marries into the influential South Carolina family in Spartanburg in 1800 when he was 25 years old.  Joseph has several children born to him which he leaves to enlist in Rutledges' forces 3rd Regiment South Carolina Troops in 1812.  Joseph Owens manages to survive a bloody campaign.  He returns to his wife and then takes her and their children to territories unknown.

South Carolina Regiment flag 1812

 In 1830, He settles in Escambia, Florida and then in Santa Rosa Territory in Florida.  He is followed by a son, a daughter and a boy I am going to suggest could be his grandson that he claims for his own son.  There has always been this hanging family secret that we are not Owens, but Bealls.  Nancy Owens married a Dr. Hebreden Beall who gets conveniently taken to Capitol prison during the Civil War for a number of years only to return to his first wife in Alabama, where he gives a medical knowledge legacy to his sons and their sons and their grandsons who eventually start up the Cook's County Hospital for Children (after they marry into a Texas Oil family)  Could I make this stuff up?  Nancy being left falsely married and with small child moves from South Carolina, away from the Bennetts and the society to the wild territory of Florida where it is suggested that the small boy William Swinton Bennett Owens is from Joseph and becomes Nancy's young brother.  There is absolutely no documentation, but only cackling from the Owens women.  

Map of Pensacola Navy Yard and Fort Pickens

There is documentation that Joseph Owens worked in the Navy port of Pensacola, although my father tells me Joseph Owens was a teacher.  I wonder if he was a scholar or if he was a layman. Not much is known of his service.  
He then moved to Texas in 1851-1853.  There was some documentation that as early as 1841, they were making trips to Texas in preparation for the move.

Welcome in the Victoria Advocate Newspaper

 

He moved all 38 members of his family, and at least three slaves on the USS Governor Bennett and sailed from the Pensacola port into Powder Horn port, what is now known as Indianola, Texas.  He settled in Goliad, Texas.  Lived his life there for five more years and then in 1860, he died.  He wrote a letter a year before his death saying that he would visit his son up by San Marcos area if his health is still good.  That letter sits in the Goliad Museum, but his gravestone sits in the Blackburn cemetery, long forgotten and forever lost.  His wife, Elizabeth, lived another 4 years as a widow, after her death at age 75 years old, she too was buried beside Joseph in the Blackburn Cemetery, wherever that may be.  My father asked that if I ever come across the graves, to mark their GPS so that it will not be lost completely.  I have yet to be successful at this.  I believe Joseph to have a heart that yearns for the next adventure.  I doubt he was frightened of anything.  

The Orange Mystery, South Carolina and My Grudge Against a General

I was reading a biographical article about the Griffins that was published in a San Antonio Register written in 1996. It was titled "Legacy of the Griffins: A black family that beat the odds in 1896" It was filled with mistakes and misinformation, but it was my first glimpse of Horace Griffin's opinion on the matter of being a slave and coincidentally to my ancestor WSB Owens.  One of the most bizarre things that I keep coming back to is that the Griffin family remembered the slave owner named Bill Orange, from the Orange plantation.  I dismissed this as a mispronunciation ( Bill Owens vs Bill Orange), but then I remembered that WSB and Joseph Owens were from Orangeburg, SC at one point in time.  What if the Griffin children were from the Orangeburg plantation?  Like a hound dog, I was off and running.  

calatopia plantation front drive

The only plantation (although I know that this cannot be the only plantation existing for the Owens) was the Calatopia plantation in Orangeburg.  It is connected to a Samuel Owens.  One must know that I often have a  misconception that the Owens family is small, therefore easy to find, and very few live in the small settlement of Orangeburg in 1776, but who am I kidding?  So far, every Owens child has born 15 other children and those decedents have 17 children and so on.  I came from a family of 5 myself.  Knowing this reproduction statistic, the Owens family in the 1770s could have been thousands.  I start looking and find Samuel Owens, the owner of Calatopia, who makes a shocking revelation in his will, of all places, that his wife admitted to being pregnant with another man's child (no names listed of this marriage vow violation).  I realize that all this dying and willing of lands really happened long after Joseph was born.  The timing was in the 1860s when the Owens were already in Texas, so Calatopia could not be ours. I am looking for something in 1800 or soon after 1776.   As i continue to look at the dates
I also discover a plantation in Florida that I was thrilled to find, because it belonged to Reverend J Owens.  I cannot tell you how I was just happy that finally there was a man of God in the family which was quickly squashed when I realized he too had slaves.  
Just focusing on Orangeburg, South Carolina is important because Joseph Owens is said to have lived here in 1800.  There is some information about his parents.   It is thought that his father was a William Owens and his mother a Fanny Kennedy (yep a Kennedy).  There is very little documentation to prove this.  I literally can take the Bennett side of the family tree across the ocean to Scotland and England when Cromwell was chopping off the family's heads, but the Owens side I can only trace to Joseph (1775 -1860)with documentation.  

It was only today that I learned when General Sherman was marching to the sea and burning buildings, he did my family a world of hurt.  The records for deeds as well as census and wills were moved to Columbia, SC in 1865 for safe keeping during the war, where Sherman used them for fuel during his occupation. Imagine the historical scar we will suffer from this flagrant disregard of historical records, and an outrageous love of destruction. 

Columbia South Carolina after Sherman's March

The destruction of Sherman's March in Columbia, SC

That being known, this interesting lead evolved from combing through twenty documents that were left from the fires that had some Joseph Owens something or other.  One little document, which was a petition to Craven County, SC by Joseph Owens, sent me on a Google documentation search frenzy and I discovered that in Craven County there were two boys William and John I who were the sons of Micajah Calhoon Solomon Owens (if I had another boy, I would name him Micajah Calhoon).  So could Solomon be the father to William who was the father to Joseph who was the father (or grandfather) to WSB who sold Cherry Ann?  I am giddy with details because knowing where they came from could link me to sales and deeds of Cherry Ann and her mother.  
One thing to note is that Micajah Calhoon Solomon loved his wife and called her his Beloved in his will, which I found endearing.  I do love a long standing romance.  
The other amazing thing about Micajah Calhoon Solomon and his will was that it was written and witnessed in Orangeburg District, but filed in Craven Courts.  Am I leaning too heavily on some slim connection?  There is no other mention of Joseph Owens.  
Just going back to Craven County Plats (requests for maps of boundaries acres of land)....I discovered this one fact Joseph is consistently paired with a Benjamin Owens.  This may be the rumored brothers...from a rumor I cannot substantiate in any way, that two Owens brothers came from Wales and settled in the Carolinas.  This whole Solomon Owens and Samuel Owens families ended up in Florida, but not Milton or Pensacola but further south.  It was like an Owens invasion into Florida.  With the slaves.  In all of the wills I read, very little was about their slaves.  They did mention the buying of one or two who were 16 or 14 years old.  Some were provided in the will, them and any that they "increased".  After all I have read, I gained a smorgasbord of useless information.   I do know that Joseph enlisted in the War of 1812, from Orangeburg, SC.  I do know he may have petitioned about some land in NC, where he could have been born.  I do know that all of the wills that I have read, the husbands either loved or hated their wives and took pains to mention it. And all seemed fond of their buckets of lard enough to mention them in a legal document as a valued possession.  Never once mentioning any rum, whiskey or wine. Nothing about an Orange plantation.  This is the useless information I will ponder.    

Robert Owens, second son

  

Robert Jackson Owens was WSB Owens' second son, born August 25, 1835.  Robert was 18 years old when he migrated to Texas.  He married Priscilla Ellen Gusset(who was 16 years old at the time), in 1856 on Valentines day.  For eight years Robert and Priscilla lived in the Fort Inge, Uvalde and Coleman County areas and produced five children.

John J Dix posted a flyer in the newspapers

TEXAS RANGERS ATTENTION!

DO NOT WAIT TO BE DRAFTED

The undersigned having been authorized by his excellency, the Governor, to raise a company of Rangers, under the provisions of the frontier of Texas, and approved December 21, 1861, has been granted the privilege to receive men from any portion of the State, with a view to select the very best material the country affords, that efficient service may be rendered. The act requires each man to furnish his own horse, arms and accoutrements, and I need not say that I wish them to be of the best kind available—double-barreled shot guns, light rifles and six-shooters, if possible.

The pay offered by the State Government is very liberal and equal to the most favored troops in the service—equal to the pay of any troops of the same class in the Confederate Army.
All persons desirous of availing themselves of this last opportunity of serving their State, are invited to rendezvous at Concrete, De Witt co., on the Guadalupe river, on the last day of February, 1862, for the purpose of enrollment and organization the following day, from which time they will be provided for by the Government.
JOHN J. DIX
McMullen Co., Feb. 11, 1862.

Robert served in the Texas military in 1862-63 as a private under Captain John J. Dix Company H Texas Frontier Regiment and received a total of $1054.57( or there about) for his military efforts ($12 a day plus 40 cents for his horse, minus his clothing issued in the amount of $31.54, plus and minus other expenses).  He served from August 9th, 1862 until February 4 1863.  During this time, the Texas Rangers were stationed at the two bases, one in Camp Dix (Uvalde-Sabinal Road at the Frio river) and the other Camp Nueces (san antonio-eagle pass road where it crosses the Nueces river).  They would leave base on patrol with one Lt and five privates and prevent Indians, Mexican raiders from attacking, and draft dodgers from escaping.  

In 1864, as the story goes according to Jesse Sumpter,  a man and his wife of the Wood family (camp wood, reading wood black, etc) left to Eagle Pass to purchase supplies.  They left their 14 year old daughter and their 12 year old son in the care of "a negro man and a Mexican man".  The day after Wood left, the Mexican murdered the boy by beating his brains out with a club while the boy was asleep.  The beat the Negro and left him for dead.  He took the girl and started for the Rio Grande.  "The negro regained consciousness and sent out the alarm to Wood and his wife at Eagle Pass, who immediately returned."  All ranchmen and troops were notified.  Three days after the boys murder, the Mexican and the girl reached a ranch four miles below Eagle Pass on the bank of the Rio Grande.  The ranchman saw the Mexican coming towards his house but also saw the girl's dress in the as she was hiding brush where she had been instructed to stay.  The ranchman guessed this was the kidnapped girl.  The rancher threw his gun and captured the Mexican, tied him up and went after the girl.  The rancher took both the girl and the captured Mexican to Fort Duncan and delivered them to Captain Hiram Mitchell.  Wood, his wife and the Owens boys (Robert and others) arrived to the fort three days later and the Mexican prisoner was turned over to them with the intention that they would deliver him to the proper Uvalde authorities.  In the evening, they took the murderous Mexican behind the hills of the San Antonio Road just out of site and built a fire.  Some troops gathered as well as the Mexican population, thinking there would be a hanging, but instead, as the fire was being built, they began to mutilate the Mexican.  They cut off his nose, his ears, his other members of his body.  They stuck their knives in his hands and feet "and split them out".  Finally they threw him in the fire.  He struggled to get out but they continued to burn him until he died.  Jesse Sumpter stated that he did not want to be part of the lynching he thought would occur, and had not stayed.  He had no idea they would torture the captured Mexican.  

Nueces River near Camp Wood

Then Woods and Robert Owens went across into Mexico to get provisions from Piedras Negras, Coah. Mexico.  Woods took his provisions immediately back, but Robert lingered.  He became drunk and boasted of taking part of the torture and killing.  He still had blood on his boots, as he so pointed out to the patrons at the bar, which enraged the Mexicans.  Jesse Sumpter heard some shots ring out across the river and he saw Robert Owens running down the bank of the river, jump into the water and start to swim across.  The Mexicans ran up the the edge of the water and emptied their pistols at Owens, apparently missing him.  As a ferry boat crossed the river, Owens swam to it.  With intention of boarding it, he caught hold of the boat as though to raise himself into it.  The Mexicans standing on the bank of the river yelled "Matalo" (kill him).  The boatman struck at Owens with a pole, missing Owens but successfully getting him off the ferry edge.  Owens drifted downstream and a skiff was crossing toward Mexico.  Owens made for the skiff and grabbed on as if to climb aboard.  The Mexican rowing the skiff put down one oar and very leisurely, got up and took the other and hit Owens in the head with it.  Owens was not seen again until nine days later when he rose to the top of the water.  Every skiff man made for the body and dragged him out on the bank on the Mexico side.  Owens' brother, seeing that the body was left on the bank after a time, sent over for permission to bring the body back. "Come over and take the dog away" was the reply.  Owens sent some men over and placed the body in a coffin and took it away to be buried.  Robert was survived by his wife, Priscilla, and five children William Milton, Mary Jane, Arena Priscilla, Robert Jackson and Albert Jackson Lee.  Arena Priscilla never married but lived with her mother and William, the oldest son, would later die in a shoot out in New Mexico over a 50 cent debt.  The killing of Robert Owens is detailed in the book "Paso del Aguila" where Jesse Sumpter records his memoirs.  

My trip to Uvalde and the Heartbreaking find about Hagar

For whatever reason, and whatever bee got in my bonnet, I decided to travel to Uvalde, Texas and search for some graves and documents and maybe a museum.  I did find Jane Heart Griffin and her daughter Cherrie Ann (when I first saw these names, I had palpations, but the dates do not add up and this Cherrie Ann could not have been Horace's sister, born in or about 1853.  This was his first wife, Jane and his first daughter, Cherri Ann.  The naming of his daughter after his long lost baby sister was a tender moment for me.  Sadly both died of small pox epidemic that swept through Texas.  
I found some documents for WSB Owens, his name on over 12 documents, mostly buying of property.  The best thing I was directed to was a lovely lady named Belia Romo, a historian extraordinaire.  She directed me to several books, but actually pulled a file of narratives and documents that the library had researched over the years at the request of a local judge.  In these documents, I found more narratives about the killing of the sheriff (which I think initially sparked the judges' interest as did mine), some narratives about the true reason Robert was killed, and the most heartbreaking paragraph about Hagar.  It basically said that in the preparation to move to Uvalde, WSB Owens signed a hand written contract in Karnes County with a Warren Cass.  The two men agreed that WSB Owens would purchase an ox cart and three yoke of oxen (6?) for $242.50 to be paid before November 21, 1857 for the security of the payment "a certain negro girl named Hager aged about ten years."  Cass would be required to feed and clothe her at his expense and if said "negro shall die before redelivering the money then and that case this obligation be considered null and void".  I sat in the truck reading this and let it hit me.  He sold her.  She was only 10 or 11 years old.  Sold to a perfect stranger in Karnes County.  Not where he lived, not where he was going to live.  Of course you know I immediately started looking for a Warren Cass during that era and found a german man from Fredericksburg area who was drug out of his house and hanged for Sedition against the Confederacy by the Der Hangdebrande.  I could not prove that this was Hagar's temporary master.  Laying in bed, and finally closing my laptop, I thought about Hagar and that fateful day.  Two years prior, she was taken from her mother and the life she knew, then for oxen and cart, taken away from her two brothers.  Did Horace truly just sit there and not cry when he saw his sister roll off into the distance.  How did he continue to serve this master?  The mother in me wonders what her days and nights consisted of.  Was she brutalized? Raped? Beaten? Starved? Who would protect her, only the sensibilities of the Cass man?  I am sickened and realize that no matter how hardened one is by war and death, the victimization of a small girl cannot be justified in a man's heart.  As she pleaded not to go, was he not touched in some way? Was it really as if he sold a horse or a dog? Surely he had some sense of right and wrong to know that in that moment he negotiated the deal, WSB Owens had sinned against God and humanity.  Not George, Horace or Buck Owens would ever be the same...nor would my view of him.  

Hagar Griffin

From the first moment I read her name, Hagar Griffin, I wondered about her.  She was just a small girl and living 700 miles from her mother.  I believe she was 9 or 10 years old when she left for Texas in 1853.  I believe that whole time prior to her migration to Texas, she lived with her mother.  I had read somewhere (lord only knows where in the now thousands of documents I have read late at night), that she may have died when she was 16 years old.  I have never been able to prove it nor have I seen that sentence since.  Ever since I have made contact with the Griffin descendants, I have found more records.  I sometimes imagine it as a book that grows pages.  I look back to my original research and another hint or document is uncovered.  I was searching graves again and low and behold, Hagar Griffin buried in a Houston Cemetery.  I couldn't wait to tell the Griffin family.  Then I found her death certificate.  This told me several things: her age, that her descendants did not know where she came from only Florida and that she married a David King and she was a widow.  Also her birthdate.  Her address is there as well, and I googled it... there is a car wash established there now, but if you go to the next block, there are some lovely houses. 

The Griffin Family Cemetery

A new lesson I learned was that after the Juneteenth, free men and women "of color" could be buried with their names on a stone.  They may not be buried in the same public city cemeteries, but some blessed person in each community is making historic efforts in documenting the location of the cemetery and the who is buried in it.  This makes lineage easier to track.  My father said that WSB Owens was buried in the 6 mile cemetery and not only can I confirm that but also can see a picture of it.  
As I do on my mornings off, I start with a cup of coffee and with hopes high with a random search.  I typed in "Griffin" and "cemetery" and was blessed.  There it was, not a secret at all, but an amazing discovery for me! The Griffin Family Cemetery!  There are 9 interments and with one deep breath, I pressed a button and there it was. The gravestone of Horace Griffin, the young boy who endured the cruelty of slavery, of losing his mother, trekking across the Gulf of Mexico in a boat, of defending against Indian attacks,  the Texas weather and all sorts of suffering.  

Horace Griffin May 5 1839 Died June 30, 1914

He lived until the age of 75 years one month and 25 days! He lived! He knew freedom for the first time of his life. He moved to Wetmore, Texas (which is now part of San Antonio).  They had purchased some land and made a cemetery.  
And George is here! 
Even though it list George as unknown, I came across records that listed him as living from 1842 - 1909, 67 years.  As anyone can see, Horace outlived George.

Another glaring fact is that all of the names listed, there was no Hagar.  No mother. No Cherry Ann.  

George Griffin unknown

But the thing I did with this information is ran a family tree with it hoping to pick up any descendants of the Griffin Children.  I know this is a late thought, but it took me a while to think outside the box.  I mean, my father and I still exist.  What is to say that the Griffin family is not also thriving.  I ran it forwards and came across one name.  A direct descendant of Horace, and she was lovely.  She had started a Griffin Family Tree and I could easily contact her on the message board.  I found her on Facebook and then I found another.  Did I have the courage to contact them?  What was I going to say "Um excuse me, but I am one of the descendants of your ancestors owners?  I am researching for my own selfish needs and can you share some information?"  Lord I could not, would not wish to bring that retribution on my head.  They have every right to ignore me, block me, despise my family.  I knew of their existence for over a month before I could get up the courage to contact them.  Even in telling my friends about this, they would just stare at me, gaped mouth.  Are you kidding? You want to contact them? I had thought long and hard about it.  I knew something about my ancestors, but not the whole truth.  What if it was the same for them?  What if they always knew about Cherry Ann?  What if the mother had reunited with the children?  Then my search was over.  

I messaged her.  It was awkward.  I prayed about it. 

 "I am hesitant to approach you, but I had noticed that your tree had little information on Horace Griffin, and I have some information on how he came to be in Uvalde from Florida. I am quite shocked as this part of my family history has not been spoken of ever and I am just recently finding information about this. This part of my history is a shame to me and I am trying to reconcile myself to it. When I found both Horace Griffin and Hagar on your tree, I knew these were two of the three slaves that were brought to Texas by my ancestors when they were 17, and 13 years old. George Griffin was only 9 years old. They were owned by William Swinton Bennett Owens, (though the thought is disgusting to me), I wanted you to know this for your ancestors tree. As the family stories were lost to several generations, I am slowly rebuilding them. I noticed that you too have little on your tree and I wanted you to know your family as well. I will continue to search the plantation in which I think the Griffin family was connected to. I understand if you want to block me."

I didn't look at the messages for days for fear of rejection.  I completely understood the predicament.  Then I got a sweet message! 

Thank you so much for reaching out!

From what little I know, Horace and his siblings were sold and brought to Texas due to their previous owner having debts and needing to money to keep his grist mill. If you can find out what happened to Horace's mother and what her name was that would be great. Also, if his father's name is known that would be great. 

Please let me know everything you can find out.
Please know that you are not held accountable for what your ancestors did. They were caught up in a system that was hard to detach from due to the livelihood the system provided. You are very brave to reach out. Not many people would do that.
By the way, what was the name of the plantation?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

It was the beginning of crossing one of the unspoken barriers.  The sharing of information between the  families.  Her loving attitude completely disintegrated my awkwardness and we had crossed the barrier together.  By the way, I still don't know the name of the "plantation".  I never even knew we had one.  I still don't think we ever had a true plantation.  I once found an article in a journal that was about the survival of the Griffin family.  It was full of holes of information and misinformation.  The article mentioned that they were from the Bill Orange plantation.  I asked daddy if ever there was an orange plantation and he said not that he knew.  He told me that in the 70s, a black man came into the lumber yard where he worked and called him Mr. Orange.  He said he was saying Owens, but it sounded like orange. In the article, the Griffins referred to my ancestor as Bill Orange, our family called him "Buck" or "Swint" Owens.  It was obvious that the spoken word and the written word made another barrier.  I imagined Horace's mother looking for Bill Orange and never finding them.