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.