Owen, James

Owen, James a minister of the Society of Friends, was born Feb. 18, 1822, near Caesar's Creek. Ohio, and was religiously trained. In 1826 his family removed to Hendricks County, Indiana, where he learned something of the difficulties and privations incident to frontier life. He was recorded as a minister Sept. 8, 1849. He labored in Iowa in 1849, visited the yearly meetings of Philadelphia, New York, and New England in 1850. and soon after went again to Indiana and Ohio. In 1854 he again visited Iowa, and, in view of the rapid emigration of Friends to that state, left his home, then in Howard County, Indiana, and settled at Bangor, Iowa, in 1855. Here he was subjected again to many .privations. Afterwards he visited the Friends of Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, and North Carolina, and labored among the freedmen in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. March 16, 1369, he went on a visit to the Society of Friends and others in England, Ireland, and some parts of the Continent. He returned to America, and visited in course Baltimore and North Carolina yearly meetings, and appointed meetings within the limits of Randolph and other counties, as many as seventeen per week. The climate of this latitude proved detrimental to his health, and an attack of typhoid pneumonia obliged him to seek a northern climate. He died Jan. 2, 1871, and was interred in the Friends' cemetery at New Providence, Iowa. James Owen was eminently successful in his unusually abundant ministerial labors. The weightiness of his spirit, the edifying manner in which he preached, and the solemnity of his appeals, together with his sincere kindness and genial ways, gave him a place in the hearts of all, both old and young, within the scope of his acquaintance. See Friends' Review (Philadelphia), Nov. 2, 1872.