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F.W. Owen
(1840 - 1933)
Home State: New York
Education: Georgetown College School of Medicine (1867);
Medical University of Paris, Class of 1869
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
Son of a sea Captain, he was educated in Switzerland and Germany between 1855 and 1860 and in 1861 he was a merchant in Manhattan, NY. He enrolled for war service in Washington, DC and mustered as 2nd Lieutenant, Company I, 38th New York Infantry on 12 November 1861. He was detailed to the US Signal Corps in December 1861.
On the Campaign
On 4 September 1862 he was at Hall's Hill in Arlington, VA, on the 9th at a station at Seneca, MD, and on the 15th with General McClellan near South Mountain. On the 16th he was near Keedysville and on 17 September 1862 on the battlefield of Antietam. He was sent to the Elk Ridge station east of the battlefield on 20 September.
The rest of the War
He was transferred to Company F of the 38th Infantry and promoted to First Lieutenant on 12 December 1862 and returned to his regiment and transferred again, to Company H, on 26 March 1863. He mustered out on 22 June 1863. He was commissioned Captain and Commissary of Subsistence, US Volunteers to date from 27 February 1863 and resigned on 18 November 1864. He was honored by brevet to Major of Volunteers in March 1865 for his war service.
After the War
He was a clerk at the Freedman's Bureau in Washington, DC and studied medicine at Georgetown College. He studied in Paris 1867-69 then returned to New York, and was at Long Island College Hospital. He moved to Morristown, NJ in 1870 and practiced medicine there for about 40 years. He had retired, still in Morristown, in 1910 and was there to his death at age 92, of pneumonia, in 1933.
References & notes
His basic service from the State of New York,1 as Frederick W. Owens, and from Heitman.2 Maryland Campaign events from Captain B.F. Fisher's Report. Details from Brown.3 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1870-1930, and a bio sketch in A History of Morris County, New Jersey: Embracing Upwards of Two Centuries, 1710-1913 (1914). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from an October 1862 group photograph taken on Elk Ridge, MD.
He married Louisa Matilda Graves (1841-1915) in November 1867 and they had two daughters Adeline (adopted?) and Jennie.
More on the Web
A collection of his family papers, including a partial autobiography, are in the North Jersey History & Genealogy Center in Morristown [finding aid].
Three of his uniform hats, a post-war photograph, and his MOLLUS medal were offered for sale online by J. Mountain Antiques.
Birth
10/06/1840; Martha's Vineyard, MA
Death
08/25/1933; Morristown, NJ; burial in Union Cemetery, Middle Island, NY
1 State of New York, Adjutant-General, Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of New York [year]: Registers of the [units], 43 Volumes, Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1893-1905, For the Year 1900, Ser. No. 22, pg. 907 [AotW citation 28670]
2 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 763 [AotW citation 28671]