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.