PIONEER
BROTHER
AND SISTER EACH LIVING TO SEE FOURTH GENERATION OF
BOTH FAMILIES
(Special to The News)
Van Alstyne, Texas, Jan. 11 - The
eighty-eighty
milestone in the
life of J.P. Owenby of Orangeville, near
Whitewright, was passed
Friday.
Mr. Owenby was born Jan. 19, 1842, in Marshall
County,
Tennessee.
He was one of eleven children of Mr. and Mrs. Elie
Gerald Owenby. His
mother
died in 1862, leaving a group of young children to
be taken care
of.
Mrs. J.L. Taylor of Pilot Grove, a sister of Mr.
Owenby, was then 11
years
old, and she being the oldest girl, it became her
lot to look after the
five younger children.
Although Mr. Owenby is now growing feeble and his
eyesight is dim
and his hearing almost gone, he is still able to
tell many interesting
facts concerning his early life and war time
experiences. Mr.
Owenby
enlisted in the Tennessee Western Division of the
Confederate Army in
the
beginning of the war. He served under Generals
Johnson, Acord and Bragg
and was several times taken prisoner.
"I carried in my vest pocket a small testament which
I often read,"
Mr. Owenby said. "I promised the Lord that if
I lived, was
spared,
and reached home again, I would served the Lord the
rest of my
life.
When I returned home, my mother was dead and I
helped my father
reconstruct
a shattered home and provide food and clothing for
younger brothers and
sisters. We had to work at anything we could
to get food and
clothing.
After I returned from the war, I united with the
Methodist Church
and have endeavored since that time to be faithful
to my promise."
Mr. Owenby was married Oct. 16, 1873, to Miss Martha
Jane
Taylor.
It was a double wedding, his sister marrying J.L.
Taylor, the brother
of
Mr. Owenby's wife. The wedding ceremony took
place at the
home of
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson Taylor in Tennessee.
"In 1882 we came to Texas, making the trip by
train." Mr. Owenby
said. "We rode on the train as far as Sherman,
then got in a
wagon
and drove some twenty miles south and east to where
the community of
Pilot
Grove is located, ten miles east of Van
Alstyne. I arrived at
Pilot
Grove with $14 in cash, a wife and four
children. The first
two or
three years at Pilot Grove were hard ones.
Cotton went as low
as
4c and everything else we had to sell was low in
proportion.
But
this depression did not last. Later on I bought a
farm located just
north
of Pilot Grove, and still later bought a larger
farm, four miles north
of Pilot Grove. I lived on the last farm until
about a year
ago,
when I moved over to Orangeville, a few miles out of
Whitewright, where
I am making my home with my son, J.P. Owenby."
On Sept. 25, 1927, a family reunion of the six
living brothers and
sisters was held at the home of Dave Taylor, son of
Mrs. Taylor, this
being
the first time some of them had met in half a
century. The
average
age of the brothers and sisters at that time was 77
years.
Mr. Owenby
and Mrs. Taylor have each lived to see four
generations of their
respective
families and each has a comfortable home with his or
her descendants.
