Owen Family Newsletter
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OWEN FAMILY NEWS Volume 24, Issue 1 Published by Owen Family Association March 2009 Page 1 http//www.geocities.com/~owenfamily My Ancestor EPHRAIM OWEN Born 1738 (By David Owen Jackson) My oldest known ancestor is an Ephraim (or possibly Ephriam) Owen. As a family Bible, which I believe was compiled several INSIDE THIS ISSUE generations later, stated “Ephraim Owen, the son of Ephraim INSIDE THIS ISSUE Our Feature Article: My Ancestor Owen was born the beginning of the year of our Lord 1738 old Descendants of William and Ephraim Owen style”. Since all the other entries in the Bible have checked out, I Drucilla Echols Owen—Part 4 By David Owen Jackson C. Owen Johnson have been inclined to go with that entry. Pages 1, 4 Page 52 However, other than that Bible entry, the first real positive record I have found of the Ephraim born in 1738 (“Ephraim II”) is his re- TheReuben President’s Pickett Message Owen andThomas His Descendants: Evan Owen ceipt of a deed to 250 acres and town lot No. 34 in Wrightsboro, AdrianPage Boone 2 Owen Georgia, a Quaker Enclave. Jody Moeller and Because the Owens were (or perhaps became) Quakers, the re- Owen DNA Update Lee Gentemenn cord from that time until the present is quite complete. By WhitPage 55Athey Page 3 Going back further, though, has proved very difficult. Although IN FUTURE ISSUES when Ephraim II arrived in Wrightsboro he was 32 years of age Genealogy Tidbits - MarchBy Carla Feature Grune Article - and already had a wife and 3 children, the best I have been able to DescendantsPages of 4William and do is to construct a circumstantial case concerning who he was, Drucilla Echols Owen—Part 5 and where he had been until then. In the belief that many of you by C. Owen Johnson Response to may find yourself in the same situation, you may find it interesting Margaret Owen≈ Thorpe’s Descendantsarticle of where my investigations led me, and how seemingly unrelated ReubenBy Pickett Judy PeeplesOwen—Part 4 facts came to bolster my conclusions. by JosephinePages 5Moeller ≈ With the proviso, then, that I remain unable to prove the follow- ing, allow me to present the evidence. The two facts that I started A DavidOwen Franklin Gravesites Owen PagesNarrative 6-7 with were that Ephraim II was born the beginning of 1738 and that by Hugh Goodman his father (Ephraim I) was also named Ephraim. My only source ≈ Sir Richard Owen Descendancy of for this was photocopied pages of the births and deaths pages of a By Carla Grune Henry “Buck” Owen family Bible belonging at some point to an Amos Owen, Ephraim Pages 8-9 By Marshall Thomas II’s grandson. Although we don’t know who made the various en- ≈ tries, the early Bible entries that we are concerned with appear to INEwing FUTURE Elmer Fidler ISSUES Story OwenBy Louis Lineage Owen have been made about 1800, only 15 or so years or so after Eph- raim II died, and at a time when quite a few of his children, and OwenOwen Politicians Histories perhaps even his wife, Mary Cooper, were still alive. Chris Hanlin (continued on page 4) Volume 24, Issue 1 Owen Family News March 2009 Page 2 Editorial Staff of the The President’s Message Owen Family News from Thomas E. Owen Editor & Officer Greetings Owen Family Association members, the plans are Carla Grune rolling forward for our association meeting. It will be held 784 S. Villier Ct. the weekend of 28-29 August in Powder Springs, Georgia. Virginia Beach, VA 23452 The venue for our meetings will be the Latter-day Saint (757) 570-7079 [email protected] Church in Powder Springs. A large genealogy library is housed there. We will have the dedicated services of the li- Publisher & Officer brary on Friday afternoon for the early arrivals and then all day Saturday. Details of the Saturday program are still being Margaret Owen Parsons worked out, more in our next newsletter. The format will be 10300-142 Kings River Rd. Reedly, CA 93654 similar to our meeting two years ago. Friday evening we will (559) 250-0740 enjoy a dinner and a social, Saturday will be our meetings. If [email protected] there are members of the association who would like to make Contributing Editors a presentation or display interesting family history informa- tion please send me an email at [email protected]. If Jane Owen Hillard there are specific topics you would like to be addressed let Kimberly Ayn Owen me know now and we will try to work them into the agenda. C. Owen Johnson William P. Owen, III Another key interest of the metro Atlanta area is our prox- Proofreading Committee imity to one of the National Archives. It is located at 5780 Jonesboro Rd in Morrow, GA. This is about 25 miles from Margaret Owen Parsons our association meeting location. If you can stay over a day Michael Patrick Owen or come early there is plenty of research that can be done Alan D. Smith there. There is a website you can access for times and direc- Carolee Moncur, PhD tions (www.archives.gov/southeast/). Raye Puckett Marsha Carmack Owen Sue Owen As the Owen Family Association continues to grow I am looking forward to a great turn out at our meeting in August. Typist We will have great southern hospitality, and great entertain- Volunteer Needed ment to go along with it. Registration information and de- Publication Dates tails will be in our June newsletter. Looking forward to see- March, June, September & December ing you in August. Deadlines are the 1st day of the month preceding publication. Tom Owen Submission of lineages, biographies, photographs, historical and genealogical data about any Owen anywhere is encour- aged! Your ideas for the newsletter are also solicited, please contact the editor. Volume 24, Issue 1 Owen Family News March 2009 Page 3 Update: The Owen DNA Project By Whit Athey ([email protected]) Seven new participants have joined the project in the last quarter. We now have about 155 Y-DNA re- cords in the results table. Since the last newsletter, we have added one new group, which has been named Owen Group 23. This added group came as a result of one of the new participants matching a previously unmatched participant. We need to have any participant who is listed in the results table without his earliest Owen ancestor be- ing shown, to provide me with information on his Owen line. Our understanding of the pre-history of modern humans has been greatly advanced by studies in popula- tion genetics, which use the same types of tests that we use in the Owen project. A very interesting video illustrating modern human migrations from an initial home in Africa, ultimately to every corner of the Earth, may be found at the following site: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/ This video represents one of two theories about when the “out of Africa” migration started, this one championed by Stephen Oppenheimer being the “early out” theory. According to this version of history, humans had already spread along the Indian Ocean coast to southeast Asia before the catastrophic explo- sion of Mt. Toba occurred 74,000 years ago. At the time of this well-dated eruption, most of the Indian subcontinent was buried to a depth of about 10 feet in volcanic ash, wiping out any inhabitants. Humans to the east of India survived and continued to spread east and north, and later returned to repopulate India and the Middle East. The alternate theory (not presented in the video), promoted by Spencer Wells of the Genographic Project is the “late departure” theory, which holds that humans did not leave Africa suc- cessfully until about 60,000 years ago. The mtDNA data seem to provide a little more support to the “early out” theory, while the Y-chromosome data seem to tilt a little toward the “late departure” theory. Regardless of the departure date, the main features of the video would be the same. Many participants in the Owen DNA Project have asked if their results point toward any particular Euro- pean locale or ethnic group for the origin of their paternal line. Unfortunately, this is generally not possi- ble yet except in a few cases with our current tests, but one day might be possible. There is one case where the origin can be inferred with good confidence—Haplogroup R1a is generally thought to have been introduced into Britain by the Vikings about 1000 years ago. Away from areas of Viking influence, Haplogroup R1a is rare in Britain. We have just two out of 155 participants in the Owen project who are R1a, and these two don’t seem closely related to each other (though they undoubtedly shared an ancestor a few thousand years ago). For those who receive their newsletter by e-mail, a copy of the current DNA results table will also be at- tached. For printed newsletter recipients, a printed results table will be mailed with the June issue. You may check the results table at the project web site at any time—the table is updated as results are re- ceived. Here’s the link: http://www.hprg.com/owen. Volume 24, Issue 1 Owen Family News March 2009 Page 4 (continued from page 1) Then one of the people I was corresponding with mentioned she had come upon an Eph- raim Owen who had received a land warrant (grant) of a tract of land in Bladen Precinct (later Bladen County), North Carolina, in August of 1735.