John Owen (1787-1841) Papers, PC.812

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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

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Restrictions on Access & Use

Access Restrictions

None

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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.


Contents of the Collection

Container Count
1 Container

Subject Headings

  • Owen, John
  • Owen Family
  • Hawkins, Mr.
  • Yancey, Bartlett
  • Jackson, Andrew
  • Jameson, John Franklin
  • Moreau (Slave)
  • Owens, Margaret
  • Smith, Henry H.
  • Omar Ibu Said (Slave)
  • Gervais & Owen (Charleston, S.C.)
  • John de Neufville and Son (Boston, Mass.)
  • Confederate States of America
  • Confederate States of America. Army. North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 5th. Company A
  • Governors
  • Presidential candidates
  • Slaves
  • Slave Patrols
  • AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OMAR IBU SAID, SLAVE IN NORTH CAROLINA
  • Bonds
  • Funeral Rites and Ceremonies
  • Lieutenants
  • Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1861
  • Prisoners of war
  • Winchester (Va.), 2nd Battle of, 1863
  • Battle Casualties
  • Death
  • Desertion, Military
  • Compensation
  • Administration of estates
  • Military Pensions
  • Arabs
  • Islamic Literature, Arabic
  • Bladen County (N.C.)
  • South Carolina
  • United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865
  • Fort Delaware (Del.)
  • Winchester (Va.)
  • Acquisitions Information

    Processing Information

    Private Manuscripts archivist, ca. 1970s; and Fran Tracy-Walls, 2018 and 2022.