John Owen (1787-1841) Papers, PC.812
Abstract
John Owen, 1787-1843, Bladen County native, was governor of North Carolina, 1829-1830. There a few letters and Owen and Smith family items. Of particular interest is a list of births of enslaved persons, 1805-1856, plus a manuscript by and material about enslaved African born Muslim scholar, Omar Ibn Said, ca. 1770-1863. There is also a diary (July 18-Dec. 31, 1864) of 2nd Lt. Henry H. Smith describing the Shenandoah Valley campaign.
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- John Owen (1787-1841) Papers
- Call Number
- PC.812
- Creator
- Owen, John, 1787-1841
- Date
- 1786-1970
- Extent
- 0.420 gigabytes
- Repository
- State Archives of North Carolina
Restrictions on Access & Use
Access Restrictions
None
Use Restrictions
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], John Owen Family Papers, PC.812, State Archives of North
Carolina, Raleigh, N.C., U.S.A.
Collection Overview
Papers relating to family of Owen, Bladen Co. native and governor of North Carolina
(1829-1830). Earliest items (1786-1808) concern Gervais & Owen of Charleston, S.C.,
including letter to John de Neufville and Son, Boston, about South Carolina bills
of credit and about the South Carolina estate of a Mr. Hawkins (1786). A letter (1825)
from John Owen to Bartlett Yancey comments on Andrew Jackson as presidential candidate.
Items concerning an enslaved man known by several names, including Moreau. These include
a photograph, Arabic writings attributed to Moreau, and a copy of "Autobiography of
Omar Ibu Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831," edited by John Franklin Jameson (American
Historical Review, XXX [July, 1925]). There is a list of enslaved persons with birth
dates (1806-1856). Other items include Margaret Owen's autograph album; a funeral
invitation (1845); receipt for Confederate bonds; and diary (July 18-Dec. 31, 1864)
of 2nd Lt. Henry H. Smith, Co. A, 5th Regt. NCT, describing Shenandoah Valley campaign,
capture at the Battle of Winchester, and imprisonment at Winchester and Ft. Delaware,
with notes on company casualties, desertions, and payments.
Inventory:
PC 0812.01
Folder 01. Correspondence and Miscellaneous 1786-88; 1808; 1825; 1845; 1864
Folder 02. H. H. Smith Civil War Diary and Family Chart
Folder 03. Prince Moreau [also known as Umar or Omar Ibu Said] and Original Arabic
Manuscript and Photograph
Folder 04. Prince Moreau Biography
Folder 05. Margaret Owen Album
Folder 06. Births of Enslaved Persons, 1806-1856
Note in other Private Collections a small quantity of letters by John Owen: PC.21.Miscellaneous
Papers; Aubrey Lee Brooks Collection. PC.359. In Louis T. Moore Collection, PC. 777,
there is a typed article by Moore about Moreau (also Umar, Omar Ibu Said, among other
names) Arabic speaking enslaved man, of the Owen family.
Arrangement Note
By subject or topic.
Biographical/Historical
John Owen, 1787-1841, was a planter, politician, and governor of North Carolina. He
was born in Bladen County, North Carolina, a son of Eleanor Porterfield and Colonel
Thomas Owen, one of the leaders of the Battle of Elizabethtown in August 1781. In
addition to his service in the American Revolution, Thomas Owen was a member of the
Provincial Congress at Hillsborough, was elected justice of the Bladen County Court
of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, and served many terms as state senator both before
and after the war. He died in 1803.
John Owen was a student at the University of North Carolina in 1804 and later served
as a trustee of the university for over twenty years. He was married to Lucy Brown,
the daughter of General Thomas Brown, and they lived at Owen Hill, a plantation up
the Cape Fear River from Elizabethtown, where he spent most of his life. They became
the parents of a daughter, Lucy, who married Haywood W. Guion, a lawyer. Their only
son, Charles, died in 1835 at the age of thirteen.
See various biographical sketches and other information including: "John Owen 1787-1841."
N.C. Highway Historical Marker I-7, N.C. Office of Archives and History.
"Governor John Owen Family Bible Records." North Carolina State Archives. North Carolina
Digital Collections.
Also see NCpedia.org biography based upon the North Carolina Biographical Dictionary
entry by Guy Owen and published by the University of North Carolina Press.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Omar (Also known as Umar, Moreau, Moro, and other names) purchased
by brother of John Own, James Owen around 1810:
See the Library of Congress collection of Omar Ibin Said with links to various essays
and blogs. Also see the following credited to http://www.ncmarkers.com, N.C. Office
of Archives and History.
Marker Text: Omar Ibn Said, ca. 1770-1863: Muslim slave & scholar. African-born, he
penned autobiography in Arabic, 1831. Lived in Bladen County and worshipped with local
Presbyterians. The following is an adaptation of the marker essay:
The man known variously as Umar, Omar, Umaru, Omaroh, Monroe, and Moreau may have
been born in Futa Toro (modern Senegal) about 1770. A version of his life was that
when Omar was about five years old, his father, an upper-class Muslim, was killed
in a war and thereafter Omar was raised by an uncle in another village. He received
an education in Africa, learning the Qu'ran, Islamic practices and prayers, reading
and writing Arabic, and some mathematics. Umar described himself as having been a
scholar, a teacher, and a merchant in his homeland.
The details of Omar's enslavement are not fully known. He wrote in his 1831 autobiography
that "there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and
brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians." In an
1819 letter he implied that he was living in the cultural center of the Mandingo Muslim
people in Bure at the time of his capture and there was, indeed, an invasion of Bure
by anti-Islamic tribes about 1806-1807. Umar ibn Said is believed to have arrived
in Charleston in 1807, shortly before the foreign slave trade was terminated.
Omar was purchased by a Charlestonian who died within a year. His second enslaver,
a Mr. Johnson, forced Omar into hard labor in his rice fields. Omar described Johnson
as "small, weak, and wicked . . . a complete infidel who had no fear of God." Umar
fled, running for about a month before arriving in Fayetteville on August 29, 1810.
There he was jailed and advertised as a fugitive slave. During his imprisonment, Umar
used coals from the fireplace to write prayers to Allah on his cell walls in Arabic.
After about ten days of notoriety derived from the unusual pictures that he drew in
the jail, Umar was purchased by James Owen of Bladen County. He lived with some degree
of privilege at the Owen plantation known as "Milton." He reportedly had a small,
private house, a horse, and was recalled by Owen family descendants to have been a
butler or overseer of the flour mill. Omar wrote that he was fed the same food as
the family. Across the river from James Owen was the "Owen Hill," the plantation belonging
to his brother, John Owen, a future governor (1828-1830). John Owen also took great
interest in Umar until his death in 1843. During the Civil War, the James Owen family,
including Omar, lived at "Owen Hill."
Omar actively practiced his Islamic faith for many years. James Owen procured for
him a copy of the Qu'ran in English in order to facilitate Umar's learning English.
As Umar learned some English, the Owens hoped that he might convert to Christianity
and to that end, James Owen, with the help of North Carolina Chief Justice John Louis
Taylor and Francis Scott Key, procured a Bible in Arabic in 1819. (The 1811 leather-bound
Bible is now owned by Davidson College.)
On December 3, 1820, "Omeroh" joined the Owens' Fayetteville church, First Presbyterian,
and attended services with them regularly. When James Owen moved to Wilmington in
1835, Umar was provided with a room in the family's Front Street home. A Washington,
D. C., writer described Umar at that time as "of feeble constitution" and "treated
rather as a friend than as a servant." Life in the state's most bustling town brought
Umar added celebrity. He was the subject of newspaper and magazine stories, many of
which contained factual errors including the often propagated idea that Umar was an
"Arabian Prince." Some writers and scholars have speculated on his devotion to Christianity,
with no useful conclusion. It is important to acknowledge that Omar brought with him
from West Africa a devotion to the Muslim and Islamic tradition, like Christianity
with roots in the Abrahamic and monotheistic tradition. It may not have been unusual
for him and others born in West Africa to practice both religions.
Omar Ibn Said is best known for the brief autobiography that he penned in Arabic in
1831 and sent in 1836 to Lamine Kebe, a freed slave and Muslim of Futa Toro, living
in New York and preparing to return to Africa. His fifteen-page manuscript is the
only extant autobiography thought to have been written by an enslaved person in a
native language. Umar's relative celebrity brought many visitors to the Owen's Wilmington
residence. Many fascinated with Omar, his scholarly and dignified demeanor, his impressive
Arabic script, were eager that he translate passages such as the Lords Prayer or the
Twenty-third Psalm. Fourteen Arabic manuscripts in Umar's hand are extant. Many of
them include excerpts from the Qu'ran and references to Allah.
It is said that Omar refused several offers to return to Africa as a Christian missionary.
His wide acclaim in his own time likely helped to keep him from hard labor and he
maintained somewhat of a place of honor in the Owen household. For the James Owen
household, a 91 year-old male slave is listed as "an African Prince called 'Monroe."
Following Omar's death at Owen Hill, probably in July 1863, he was buried in the family
plot. The headstone may have been removed about the time that the body of James Owen
was moved from the Owen Hill plot to a cemetery in Wilmington. Two known photographic
portraits of Umar were made during his lifetime, further evidence of the esteem with
which the Owens held him. The manuscript of his autobiography, thought to have disappeared
in the 1920s, resurfaced in 1995 and was sold to a private buyer at auction. It has
since been on display at a variety of institutions, including the Library of Congress.