OWEN, RICHARD: 1810-1890.
Richard Owen , youngest son of the Nineteenth century reformer Robert Owen [see, also, sketches of David Dale and Robert Dale Owen] and his wife, Caroline Dale Owen, was born near New Lanark, Scotland , on Jan. 6, 1810.
At the time of Richard's birth his father was at the peak of his career as a cotton processor employing a humane and enlightened labor policy to the profit of himself, his partners and his employees. The family fortune, later to be wrecked by dreams of world reform, was being made, and to be a son of Robert Owen was to have access to all that was new and hopeful in education.
Robert Owen was an avowed deist, while his wife, Caroline, was an uncompromising Presbyterian: Richard and the other children listened to the arguments of both sides. Their education began at home, at the hands of their mother and of the tutors she selected, and continued in the model school which their father had organized in New Lanark for the children of his employees. Like his brothers, Richard was eventually enrolled in Emanuel yon Fellenberg's Pestalozzian school at Hofwyl, Switzerland, but unlike his elder brother, Robert Dale, he continued in more conventional work at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow. His chief interest was in science.
Robert Owen's dreaming of social reform rendered his partners sufficiently hostile to make his withdrawal from the mills advisable. This state of affairs coincided with Richard Flower's opportune arrival from the U. S. with a commission to sell George Rapp's religio- communistic Harmony Community on the Wabash, and the Owens, full of plans for a modern Utopia, purchased the village and land and came to America.
The history of the difficulties which beset Robert Owen's New Harmony community for the few brief months of its survival is too complicated to be reported here. It should be noted, however, that Richard seems to have taken no very active part in its activities. He taught in the school for a while, went about the country on geological collecting trips, and cut an attractive figure at the community dances. That, it appears, was about the total of his participation.
With the dissolution of the community as such Richard Owens farmed for a while in Pennsylvania, spent three years in Cincinnati, where he employed his Glasgow chemical training in a brewery, and returned to New Harmony about 1840, to farm the land which had been his share of the settlement of his father's American property. In 1837 he had married Anna Eliza Neef.
Owen enlisted in the 16th U. S. Infantry for the Mexican War, was commissioned captain and served until August, 1848, most of the time in the service of supply.
Following the war he assisted his brother, David Dale, in the geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and part of Nebraska Territory, joined the faculty of the Western Military Institute at Drennen Springs, Ky., and remained there for nine years. The institute was eventually moved to Nashville, Tenn., and Owen occupied his spare time–he was teaching page: 245[View Page 245] natural sciences, French, German, Spanish, military science and fencing–by studying medicine at Nashville University, receiving the M.D. degree in 1858.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War he had returned to Indiana and had undertaken a geological survey of the state. When hostilities began he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 15th Indiana Volunteers. His most distinguished service was as commandant in charge of Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, where he inaugurated a humanitarian policy which brought considerable criticism from the North but under which he was most popular with his prisoners. This policy became, moreover, more or less the model for prisoner-of-war regulation in this and other civilized countries until the second World War.
Col. Owen's regiment was sent to the front in May, 1862. He and his two sons were captured at Mumfordville, Ky., but, due to his popularity with the prisoners he had entertained at Indianapolis and his acquaintance with former students from the Western Military Institute in the Confederate ranks, they received gracious treatment.
Richard Owen joined the faculty of Indiana University on Jan. 1, 1864, as an instructor in geology, chemistry and natural philosophy. There he remained, as a distinguished member of the faculty, until 1879.
In 1871 first ground was broken for construction on the future campus of Purdue University, and in 1872 –during the long organization process which that institution underwent–Richard Owen was appointed president. He did not serve, for his recommendation for organization, submitted the following year to the trustees, appeared to them and to the public generally as if, in its advanced ideas as to the importance of sanitary conveniences, beautification of the grounds and elaborate living arrangements, it might have been formulated by "Old Bob" Owen himself. "No farm college," said the people of Indiana, "should aspire to such fol-de-rols," and that was that. President Owen of Purdue resigned and continued as Professor Owen of Indiana University.
Upon his retirement from active duty Richard Owen returned to the home in New Harmony where for years he had spent his summers and where his interest in things scientific, religious, medical, and literary continued unflagging until his death in 1890.
Material taken from Albjerg–Richard Owen.
- Key to the Geology of the Globe. Nashville,
Tenn., 1857.
- "Honor to the Illustrious Dead." A Lecture
Delivered in Behalf of the Mount Vernon Association; Delivered in
… Nashville, Dec. 4, 1857.
Nashville, 1857.
- Report of a Geological Reconnaissance of Indiana, Made During
the Years 1859 and 1860, Under the Direction of the Late David Dale
Owen. (Begun byDavid Dale Owen.) Indianapolis, 1862.
- Industrial Colleges. Added, a Communication on the General
Plan of the College Building, by R. Owen (withLewis Bollman). Washington, D. G., 1864.
- Report on the Mines of New Mexico.
Washington, D. G., 1865.
- Report of a Geological Examination Made on the Lands of the
Wabash Petroleum and Coal Mining Company in Warren, Fountain and Parke
Counties. Indianapolis, 1866.
- Report of a Geological Examination, Made on Certain Lands and
Mines, in the Counties of Haywood, Madison, Buncombe, Jackson, and Macon, N.
C., and in Cocke County, Tennessee.
Indianapolis, 1869.
- Happiness and Home, Temporal and Eternal; Farewell Address
Delivered at… Indiana State University, May 11, 1879.
Bloomington, Ind., 1879.
- The Rappites: Interesting Notes About Early New
Harmony (withJ. Schnack). Evansville, Ind., 1890.
