Page 9 - my-people-abbie-harris-beck

been in office only one month when he took pneumonia and died. John Tyler thus became
the 10th president of the United States. The position that my first cousin (four times
removed), John Owen Governor of North Carolina had turned down.
John Owen, J r , son of John Owen, Sr., and brother of Colonel Thomas Owen,
married Anna Hayes about 1742. John Owen was one of the first trustees of the Andrew
Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church. The mother church of Methodism is in Sampson
County and the Greater Cape Fear Region. John Owen also fought in the Revolutionary
and became a prisoner on the "Forbay", a British Prison ship anchored in Charleston
Harbor in 1781. John Owen Jr. was appointed by a commission to locate a central and
convenient place to establish the county court house for Sampson county, North Carolina,
when the county was established. John Owen Jr. died young, leaving four children:
Owen, Thomas, Elizabeth and Nancy. (Abbie's great, great, great grandfather)
Thomas Owen links the line.
Thomas Owen, Esquire, first married Sara Parker. Their son, Doctor John
Owen, was adopted by his Aunt Elizabeth Owen and Nicholas Parker. Sara Parker Owen
died in childbirth. Thomas Owen, Esquire, second marriage was to Jemima Thomas.
Their Children: Daniel, Janette, Owen, Henry, Raiford, Jonathon, Michael and Mary.
Owen Owen married Jennie (Jane) Fowler. They had two daughters: Elizabeth
and Jane.
Jane Owen Harris was bom 3 March 1828. She was the youngest of two
daughters of Owen Owen and Jane Fowler Owen, whose home place was built
approximately in 1799 in what was once called Owenville. The home place is located just
beyond the Forrest Owen home on the old Salemburg Road or State Highway 1002. This
home place was once used as a Post Office and a stage coach layover. Records show that
Jane was postmaster in 1890. Indications are that she was a Postmaster from 1878 until
the 18th of April 1900. Jane married Jesse Richardson Harris in 1857.
A story is told about the Civil War days, about Jane Harris's encounter with a
Union soldier camped around their home at Owenville. It seems while sitting on her front
porch, the Union soldier was teaching the children to curse or swear. Jane had made
several requests of the soldier to stop. Her requests were ignored. Jane picked up a chair
and knocked the soldier off the porch. In his anger, the soldier affixed the bayonet to his
rifle and was about to bayonet Jane, when he was stopped by an officer of the Union
Troops. The officer had heard the commotion and saw what was about to happen. Jane
in a last minute effort to protect her life gave a Masonic signal of distress. The officer
recognizing that Jane was the wife of a Mason, immediately halted the soldier and
remanded him to keep away from the Harris' home. As long as the troops were there, her
home was off limits to the army soldiers.
While the Union Soldiers were camped so close to the home of Jesse and Jane, she
was alarmed that her silver might be stolen. Jane always wore an apron over her dress.
She conceived a plan to remove the silver from the house with out raising undue
suspicion. She asked the soldiers, prior to the above incident, if they would like for her to
bake them some sweet potatoes. They immediately agreed. Each time thereafter she went
to the potato hill to get potatoes, she took an apron full of silver and hid it in the potato
hill, until all her silver was safely hidden.

4 -