I asked my father about our family history and he came up with two initial stories. One, the story of our ancestor shooting a sheriff and the second about an old broken pistol that was hidden under the floor board of his house. I was intrigued. Dad said he never knew much about the family history. His grandfather had died in a wagon on the way from Encinal to Palestine. He had died in a small town of Tanglewood and his widow found the people to be so nice, she settled there. Because of this death, very few stories of the Owens family were told to him. I was so interested in this and encouraged, nay prodded, into my genealogy that I signed up for an ancestors website, and there, to my amazement, was a narrative that described my great great grandfather, William Swinton Bennett Owens. I read this narrative many times and had to overcome my initial shock...he was a slave owner. This information was unknown to me. The stories I had heard of my father's childhood of working in the fields, picking crops for pennies on the bushel, selling watermelons on the road were stories of poverty. The Owens were "dirt farmers", with little money. I had negated the possibility that the Owens owned another human, they had no money.
But there it was, so easily mentioned that William Swinton Bennett Owens gathered up his family and his slaves, Horace, Hagar and George and moved to Uvalde. And they were young. Horace, the oldest was 17 years old. Hagar only 13 years old and little George was 9 years old. That night I tossed and turned. Just young children, no mother. I woke up with so many questions I had no idea where to start. Looking back I know my focus was still researching my family. This would prove to be helpful, for in order to find the slave, you must find the owner. A harsh fact I learned early on in my searching.
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. 
