Frederick Wooster Owen was born on Martha's Vineyard, Massachussetts, October 6, 1840 to the Sea Captain William Wilson Owen and his wife, Adeline Wooster Owen. According to his unfinished autobiography, his family moved to New York when he was 1 year old. He attended Public School No. 1 in Manhattan, from 1848-1849. While his mother ran a boarding school in Brooklyn, NY, he attended St. Mark's School in Orange, New Jersey before going abroad at the age of 15 to attend schools in Neuchatel, Switzerland and Leipzig, Germany.
By 1861, having returned home after his studies and living with his mother in Brooklyn, Frederick Wooster Owen worked at a mercantile business in Manhattan. On February 19 of that year, he was one of the many people to watch President-elect Abraham Lincoln travel down Broadway on his way to his Inauguration in Washington, D.C. That same month, several southern states seceeded from the Union and on April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter was fired upon. The Civil War had begun. Soon after, Frederick W. Owen joined a Drill Company in Brooklyn and by October of 1861 he was mustared with Company I 38th NY Volunteers as a 2nd Lieutenant. He served in the Signal Corps at the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg, and at the seige of Yorkton. He became ill in the Chickahominy Swamp, convalesced at Post Hospital, Fortress Monroe, and was honorably discharged from service. In 1864, at the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln breveted him Major, "for gallant and meritorious services in the War for the Union". Frederick W. Owen received a clerkship in the Freedman's Bureau, advancing quickly to chief clerkship, then took up the study of medicine at Georgetown College, Washington, D.C. On November 10, 1867 Frederick Wooster Owen married Louisa Graves, daughter of a New York City cotton merchant. They set sail for Europe for their honeymoon, afterwards residing in Paris as Frederick W. Owen studied for a diploma of medicine. In 1869 the Owens' returned to New York where Frederick served on the staff of the Long Island College Hospital. In 1870 the young couple moved to Morristown, New Jersey where Dr. Owen was to practice medicine for the next 40 years.
Professionally, Frederick W. Owen was an accomplished physician: He was the attending physician at All Soul's Hospital, a consulting physician at Memorial Hospital, the first appointed city physician of Morristown, President of the Morris County Medical Society for one term and the physician and surgeon at the Morris County Jail. Within the town of Morristown, Dr. Owen became an outstanding community leader: he was a Director and Trustee of the Morristown Public Library, a charter member of the South Street Presbyterian Church and a senior elder at the Emmanuel Independent Presbyterian Church. He also belonged to the Sons of the American Revolution and the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.).
Just as Frederick Wooster Owen was active in the local community, his wife, Louisa, was equally involved in the well being of the town and it's citizens: according to a speech given by their daughter Jennie Owen Mudge, both her mother and father were founders of the Market St. Mission, originally named the Rescue Mission. Devout Christians, they instilled their values and love of humanity within their daughters: Adeline Wooster Owen and Jennie Graves Owen. Adeline would later become a missionary herself, travelling extensively around the world, while the younger daughter Jennie married a Presbyterian minister.
Though a small collection, the Owen Family Papers are a rich resource of primary material from the later half of the 19th century into the early 20th century. The documents, photographs, ephemera and newspaper articles of this collection provide a glimpse into a soldier's personal experience of the Civil War. Also served in this collection are elements of his professional and personal life as a doctor, husband, father and citizen of Morristown at the turn of the 20th century. Another interesting facet of these papers are the different views of the kinds of life available to young, educated, and upper middle class women of the time period. Evidence of an unconventional feminine life, in contrast to a more demure and typical lifestyle can be seen in the correspondence and scrapbooks of Frederick Wooster Owen's daughters, Adeline Wooster Owen and Jane Owen Mudge.
Arranged into three series, the first series contains personal and professional information about Dr. Frederick Wooster Owen. The second series focuses on his service with the Union Army, both during and after the Civil War. The last series is composed of books on his wife's family ancestory (2 volumes), scrapbooks compiled by his two daughters and Dr. Owen's mid-18th century, Neuchatel school cap. All three series are arranged chronologically.
Series I topics include Frederick Wooster Owen's schooling, his medical profession in Morristown, his personal interest in the Morristown community, his fraternal organization involvement and information about his family members. The majority of documents in this series are correspondence, programs, and newspaper/magazine clippings. There is also a folder of photographs dated from the late 1800's.
This series contains war correspondence, a military report, and military recommendations from Brigadier General Volunteers J. H. Hobart Ward, Brigadier General O.O. Howard and Major General Volunteers John Sedgwick. The military report was written by Senior Signal Officer and Lieutenant of the 29th New York Volunteers, J. Gloskoski, praising Frederick W. Owen for having "remained cool in the hottest of fire, and uniformly behaved as becomes an officer and a soldier" during the bombardment and battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, dated December 16, 1862. The two other pieces of correspondence are more personal in nature. One is a letter of friendship from General O.O. Howard, written while he was camped in Blacksburg, Virginia in late 1861, and the other is a letter to his future wife, Louisa Graves, written from the camp of the 1st Cavalry Brigade under General Averell in 1862. The remaining folders of this series contain Frederick W. Owens military record, a job recommendation from General Alfred J. Myers to the governor of New York in 1867, examples of the poetry and prose Frederick W. Owen wrote about the war, a Morristown Memorial Day Program from 1900, newspaper clippings of articles and obituaries concerning Civil War generals and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States confirming Frederick W. Owen as a member of that group. A 58 star American flag is also included in this series. It is believed to have been draped over Dr. Frederick W. Owen's coffin before burial.
This last series contains two Extra-illustrated books on the ancestory of Louisa G. Owen, wife of Frederick W. Owen. The two volumes are entitled,
This collection is open to researchers. Records may be copied for use in individual scholarly or personal research, however, as with all materials in the North Jersey History Center researchers are responsible for obtaining copyright permission to use material from the collection. Material in the Owen Family Papers may be photocopied, but because this material is a permanent part of the History Center's collections, researchers are advised to photocopy with care, using only the edge copier for bound material.
Papers acquired through a gift by Adella M. Natress in 1983.
Owen Family Papers, 1857-1937. North Jersey History Center, The Morristown and Morris Township Library.
Inventoried by Lois Densky, 1983. Processed and encoded by Mary McMahon Dawson, 2008.