THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF THE MELUNGEONS

 

                       By Tim Hashaw

                   Editorial Boardmember

          1937 Huge Oaks    Houston, Texas, 77065

              E-mail: wildwestgifts4u@aol.com

 

Part VII:

CONCLUSION

 

They first settled in Virginia one year before the Pil-

grims landed at Plymouth Rock.  They were free Americans

150 years before George Washington fought the British.

Some of their descendants are world famous: Abraham Lin-

coln through his mother Nancy Hanks, actor Tom Hanks, El-

vis Presley, Heather Locklear, Ava Gardner, comedian

Steve Martin, singer-writer Rich Mullins and many others.

 

Yet the African-American ancestors of mixed groups like

the Melungeons and their brothers, the Lumbees, Red Bones

Brass Ankles and others, are only now beginning to emerge

from the dim mists of early American history.

 

The greatest misunderstanding about Melungeon origins

concerns the status of the African-Americans who, along

with whites and Indians, gave birth to this mixed commun-

ity. It is commonly believed in scholarly circles that

the African heritage of Melungeons comes from the off-

spring of 18th and 19th century white plantation owners

and black female chattel slaves.

 

Wrong on two counts.

 

The very first black ancestors of Melungeons appeared,

not in the 18th century, but as early as 1619 in the tide

water colonies.  By the time they joined with the first

settlers in Tennessee, the Melungeon community was al-

ready more than a hundred years old.

 

Secondly, not one Melungeon family can be traced to a

white plantation owner and his black female slave.

 

For purposes of determining the origin of the name "Mel-

ungeon", this bears repeating.

 

Melungeons are not the offspring of white plantation own-

ers and helpless black females slaves.  Most of the Afri-

can ancestors of Melungeons were never slaves. They were

former black servants freed from indentured servitude

just like white servants, usually before 1720. Other Af-

rican ancestors of the Melungeons either purchased their

freedom from slavery or were freed upon the deaths of

their white owners. But the great majority of the black

ancestors of Melugia were free by 1720. Most often, they

married white women in Virginia and other southern colon-

ies.  Understanding the status of the African ancestors

of Melungeons is critical to understanding their history.

 

THE AFRICAN CONTROVERSY

 

The issue of African blood in Melungeons was controver-

sial as early as the first recorded written use of the

name "Melungeon."  The name appeared in the September

26th, 1813 minutes of the Stoney Creek church of Virgin-

ia.  Sister Susanna Kitchen brought a complaint to the

church against Sister Susanna "Sookie" Stallard for "har-

boring them Melungins." Stoney Creek had a membership

which included whites, free Negroes, slaves and Melun-

geons. Each group was segregated within the church and

the color bar was strictly enforced. Melungeons were a

threat to that color bar.

 

By 1813, some 150 years after the origin of the Melun-

geons in America, their ancient ancestry was already be-

coming obscured in different areas of the country. The

younger southern states, had a tradition in the early

1800s that Melungeons were not African, but rather were

Mediterrenean or South Seas people. For example: William

Goyens was born in North Carolina in 1794 to a "free Ne-

gro" father and a white mother.  In 1821 he came to Texas

and became a prosperous millionaire [by today's standards

businessman in Nacogdoches.  In 1832 he proposed marriage

to a white woman named Polly Sibley. Her brothers came

from Georgia to block the marriage, but consented when

they heard that William Goyens was not African, but "Me-

lungeon".

 

However during this same period, the original tidewater

colonies-turned-states, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and

the Carolinas knew otherwise.  Virginia grandfathers

from the colonial era could remember the Negro ancestors

of the Melungeons even though the issue of black and

white intermarriage never scandalized the earlier genera-

tion as it did their grandchildren.  To the Stoney Creek

church, the possibility of sexual attraction between the

children of white members and the mixed children of Me-

lungeon members was alarming. When Stoney Creek's Melun-

geons members began to move away into Kyle's Ford, Ten-

nessee, the white church members of Virginia breathed a

sigh of relief.

 

From time to time these Melungeons would return to visit

Stoney Creek, a 40-mile trip which required a one night

stop-over.  Sister "Sookie" came under suspicion from

other white church members for allegedly "harboring them

Melungins" overnight.

 

In the Stoney Creek case in the early 1800s, the presence

of just a little African blood in Melungeons raised ten-

sions because Melungeons were otherwise white.  Blacks,

free and slave, were welcome to worship with whites at

the Stoney Creek church. Melungeons were not.

 

But this was not always the case in the history of Vir-

ginia.  Once upon an earlier time in America, mixed Me-

lungeons and indeed many full-blooded Africans, were

strangers to prejudice.

 

THE KIMBUNDU-ANGOLAN ORIGIN OF THE NAME "MELUNGEON"

 

The Stoney Creek mention of "Melungeons" reveals the name

was a common word familiar to Virginians at least as ear-

ly as the beginning of the 19th century. Free Melungeons

of mixed red, white and black ancestry originated within

one generation of the first Angolans who arrived in Vir-

ginia in 1619 and who continued coming to the southern

tidewater colonies through 1720.  These early Africans

were Kimbundu-speaking Angolans who, like Angolans in

Brazil, described themselves as "malungu".  Within a dec-

ade of arriving in Virginia, after serving about 7-10

years of indentured servitude, these Angolan ancestors of

the Melungeons were free to move from county to county.

They were free as early as 1640 to own property and to

name their community in their native Kimbundu language.

 

The name "Melungeon" was not applied to these first Afri-

cans by white outsiders or slave owners.  It was a name

they called themselves.  Stoney Creek church records show

the name "Melungeon" was known in Virginia before it ap-

peared in Tennessee.  Mixed Melungeons had lived in Vir-

ginia from 1660.  At that time, their native Angolan fa-

thers still spoke Kimbundu along with English. The origin

of the name "Melungeon" in Virginia and not Tennesseee,

and the presence of Kimbundu-speaking Angolans in Virgin-

ia by 1660, strongly support a Kimbundu-African etymology

for the name "Melungeon".

 

The name "Melungeon" comes directly from the Kimbundu-An-

golan word "malungu", which originally meant "watercraft"

Kimbundu was the language of the Mbundu nation which in-

cluded the Ndongo kingdom.  The first Africans coming to

Virginia in 1619, and for many years afterward, were

Mbundu.  This Kimbundu word came to mean "shipmates from

a common country" among Mbundu people in America.  John

Thornton of Millersville University of Pennsylvania, and

Linda Heywood of Howard University have found evidence of

the name elsewhere.

 

"In Brazil, which had a heavily Kimbundu-speaking African

population, the term "malungu" was used to mean anyone

who had traveled on the same ship together, and gradually

extended [by definition] to other close companions or

friends. Since the word derives from Kimbundu [the same

word is also used in Kikongo] and not Portuguese, there

is no reason that it can't also be used in areas outside

Brazil where the Angolans went."

 

The Mbundu in Virginia, as in Brazil, used "malungu" to

describe their fellow countrymen shipped west to the New

World across the Atlantic. Prof. Robert Slene wrote an

article entitled, "Malunga, ngoma vem! Africa encoberta

e descoberta no Brasil" [Malungu, ngoma comes! Africa un-

covered and discovered in Brazil].  Slene notes that in

Brazil, the word was borrowed into Portuguese as "melun-

go" [shipmate] from the Kimbundu and Kikongo languages.

He cites the philologist Macedo Soares as giving a defi-

nition of "malungo" in 1880 [in Portuguese]:

 

"companheiro, patricio, da mesma regiao, que veio no mes-

mo comboio parceiro da mesma laia, camarada, parente."

 

[Translation: companion, fellow countryman, from the same

region, who travels on the same conveyance, from the same

background, comrade, relative.]

 

Soares cites a 1779 Portuguese dictionary with the exam-

ple, "Malungo, meu malungo" . . . chama o preto a outro

cativo que veio com ele na mesma embaracao . . . "

 

[Translation: "Malungo, my malungo" . . . the black calls

another captive who came with him on the same ship)"

 

Slene finds the etymology of the later Portuguese word

"melungo" in the earlier Angolan "malungu" from the lan-

guages of Kimbundu, Kikongo, and Umbundu [spoken in cen-

tral Angola).  In the modern languages, the definition of

"malungu" can mean "companion".

 

Thornton and Heywood write:

 

" . . . the idea that the term means "shipmate" and could

be extended to "countryman" or "close friend" and "rela-

tive" makes great sense to us and gives the term "Melun-

geon" great significance."

 

The name "Melungeon" is an English corruption of the Kim-

bundu "malungu", used by newly-arrived Angolans in colon-

ial Virginia to describe their new community in America

as companions, shipmates, fellow passengers from a common

homeland who had endured the great Atlantic crossing to-

gether.  Seventeenth century Kimbundu-speaking Mbundu

people in America took anglicized surnames which are

still found among Melungeon descendants today.

 

Scenarios for a French, or Portuguese origin for the name

"Melungeon" are highly speculative.  Angolans, who were

without question among the ancestors of American Melun-

geons, called themselves "malungu" at the same time Me-

lungeons originated in 17th century Virginia.  At this

time in history, French adventurers and traders were re-

garded as spies and barred from Virginia.  The French

"malange" meaning "mixed" is an unlikely source of the

name "Melungeon". Only the vaguest of scenarios have been

proposed to explain the French "malange" theory, and

those have been outside of historical context.

 

There is only a remote possibility that these Angolans

called themselves after the Portuguese "melungo" since we

have no evidence of the Kimbundu word being adapted into

Portuguese as early as the 17th century. The word "Melun-

geon" did not derive from the Portuguese "melungo". Rath-

er, both the English "Melungeon" and the Portuguese "me-

lungo" came directly from the Kimbundu "malungu"

.

FIVE EVIDENCES FOR AN ANGOLAN ORIGIN OF "MELUNGEON"

 

1. American Melungeons formed as a community by 1660,

within the lifetimes of the first Kimbundu-speaking Ango-

lans to arrive in Virginia in the 17th century. "Melungu"

is a Kimbundu word.  There is no doubt these Angolans had

Melungeon descendants.

 

2. The Melungeon community began in the era during which

Virginia started passing laws which restricted and isola-

ted these free Angolan African-Americans.  This ethnic

isolation, beginning about 1670, further set them apart

as a distinct community even while many whites were join-

ing them.  These whites suffered legal punishment for do-

ing so.

 

3. The wary xenophobic vigil of the British-American col-

ony of Virginia in the 17th century seriously undermines

a possible French or Portuguese influence on the origin

of the name "Melungeon".  European trespassers who were

not British, were either strung up or expelled from Vir-

ginia.  Any white found in Virginia in the 17th century

who was not British, nor a British ally, was typically

arrested as a suspected spy. This would exclude any theo-

rized French fur trappers alleged to have discovered the

Melungeons, and all "lost" or abandoned Portuguese or

Spanish colonies. A "blue-eyed Indian" would have been

viewed suspiciously by the British in Virginia who habit-

ually destroyed any French, Spanish, or Portuguese set-

tlements they found, after first executing or deporting

their inhabitants.  France, Spain, Portugal and England

were all embroiled in a fierce fight to the death over

the territory between New Amsterdam [modern New York])

and Florida.

 

4. Melungeons are descendants of northern Europeans, nat-

ive Americans, and Kimbundu-speaking Angolan-Africans. It

is reasonable to assume that their name came from one of

the languages of these three people.  No English, Gaelic,

German, Dutch or Indian etymology for "Melungeon" is ser-

iously considered at present.  However, Angolans referred

to their community as "Malungu."  It is likely that this

Kimbundu name became the source of the anglicized word

"Melungeon" in America.

 

5. The Melungeons were not the descendants of helpless

African-American slaves.  They were free descendants of

free African-Americans who had the liberty to move from

place to place and the liberty to identify themselves.

The name fits them.  They were people who had all come

from a common homeland [Angola] by ship to a new country.

They were "malungu".  They were never slaves.  They were

never chained to the plantations.

 

OTHER ANGOLANS IN VIRGINIA

 

The first "20 and odd" Mbundu who came to Virginia in

1619 were not the only Angolans coming to the British-

American colonies in the 17th century, nor were they the

only Angolan ancestors of the Melungeons. Dozens of other

privateers brought Mbundu and other Bantu peoples for de-

cades after 1619.  While some blacks also came from Kon-

go, most were from Angola.  These later Angolan arrivals

also had children who can be identified as early Virginia

Melungeons.

 

Records of the activities of the West India Company show

that during the absence of any substantial English slave

trading directly with Africa, privateers, exclusively

robbing only Portuguese slavers out of Angola, accounted

for the overwhelming majority of Africans arriving in

Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Amsterdam, and North

and South Carolina for the good part of the century.

Thornton and Heywood have documented colonial America's

reliance on privateers who exclusively targetted Angolan

slaveships from a Bermuda-based operation with:

 

  " . . . half a dozen privateering commissions issued

  by this company that include specific provisions about

  taking slave ships and delivering them to Bermuda,

  Virginia and even New England . . . virtually all, if

  not all, Africans arriving in Virginia [or any other

  colony of England or the Netherlands] prior to 1640,

  and perhaps even after that for some years, origina-

  ted in Angola [either Kimbundu or Kikongo speaking

  regions].

 

Over 200 surnames of free 17th century African-Americans

who intermarried with white settlers have been found by

researchers like Paul Heinegg and J. Douglas Deal.  Ac-

cording to the records obtained by Thornton and Heywood,

these African-Americans were mostly native Angolans.  The

following names of some 50 African-Americans, appeared in

the colonies when English and Dutch privateers were con-

centrating exclusively on merchant-slavers from Angola.

Many of these African-American surnames can be found

among Melungeon descendants today.  The dates represent

either the time of an individual's appearance or date of

birth.

 

ANGOLAN ANCESTORS OF MELUNGEONS IN EARLY 17TH CENTURY

VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, DELAWARE AND THE CAROLINAS:

 

1620s

Carter, Cornish, Dale/Dial, Driggers, Gowen/Goins, John-

son, Longo, Mongom/Mongon, Payne,

 

1630s

Cane, Davis, George, Hartman, Sisco, Tann, Wansey

 

1640s

Archer, Kersey, Mozingo, Webb

 

1650s

Cuttillo, Jacobs, James,

 

1660s

Beckett, Bell, Charity, Cumbo, Evans, Francis, Guy, Har-

ris, Jones, Landum/Landrum, Lovina/Leviner, Moore, Nick-

ens, Powell, Shorter, Tate, Warrick/Warwick

 

In the above lists of surnames there is found other docu-

mentation that these Africans arriving from 1620-1660

were Angolan. Anthony Johnson's grandson named his Mary-

land plantation "Angola".  The sister of Sebastian Cane

was also named "Angola".

 

Some families such as Banks, Bass, Berry, Chavis, Sweat,

Davis, Hanser, Lang, Lawrence, Fisher, Hammond, Lucas,

Matthews began with white ancestors from which certain

branches initially intermarried with Indians. However all

of these these white and Indian families intermarried

with Africans in America, often before 1700 when most of

the blacks would have been native Angolans.

 

The original term "Malungu" used by early Kimbundu and

Kikongo-speaking Africans from Angola, was extended to

include all mixed red, white and black family members in

America.  The idea of malungu as "shipmates" gradually

came to mean "countrymen", "close friends" and "rela-

tives" later in the 18th century freeborn Melungeon com-

munity. This terminology would not have extended to black

chattel slaves who were separated from the free black

community by plantation bondage.

 

After the 1660s, more Angolan intermarriages added other

surnames also found today among modern Melungeons.  Many

of the late 17th century African arrivals held a connec-

tion to Angola through in-laws or ancestors.  Some of the

following who were not outright Angolan by ancestry,

would have been influenced by the dominant 1620-1660 An-

golan-American community by marriage or other social

bonds.

 

LATER 17TH CENTURY AMERICAN FAMILIES

ASSOCIATED WITH ANGOLANS

 

1670s

Anderson, Atkins, Barton, Boarman, Bowser, Brown, Bunch,

Buss, Butcher, Butler, Carney, Case, Church, Combess,

Combs, Consellor, Day, Farrell/Ferrell, Fountain, Game,

Gibson/Gipson, Gregory, Grimes, Grinnage, Hobson, Howell,

Jeffries, Lee, Manuel, Morris, Mullakin, Nelson, Osborne,

Pendarvis, Quander, Redman, Reed, Rhoads, Rustin, Skipper,

Sparrow, Stephens, Stinger, Swann, Waters, Wilson.

 

1680s

Artis, Booth, Britt, Brooks, Bryant, Burkett, Cambridge,

Cassidy, Collins, Copes, Cox, Dogan, Donathan, Forten/

Fortune, Gwinn, Hilliard, Hubbard, Impey, Ivey, Jackson,

MacDonald, MacGee, Mahoney, Mallory, Okey, Oliver, Penny,

Plowman, Press/Priss, Price, Proctor, Robins, Salmons/

Sammons, Shoecraft, Walden, Walker, Wiggins, Wilkens,

Williams

 

1690s

Annis, Banneker, Bazmore, Beddo, Bond, Cannedy/Kennedy,

Chambers, Conner, Cuffee, Dawson, Durham, Ford, Gannon,

Gates, Graham, Hall, Harrison, Hawkins, Heath, Holt,

Horner, Knight, Lansford, Lewis, Malavery, Nichols, Nor-

man, Oxendine, Plummer, Pratt, Prichard, Rawlinson, Ray,

Ridley, Roberts, Russell, Sample, Savoy, Shaw, Smith,

Stewart, Taylor, Thompson, Toney, Turner, Weaver, Welsh,

Whistler, Willis, Young

 

These free black, white and red families of the 17th cen-

tury, and many more of the early 18th century, intermar-

ried to produce the Melungeons. The original African

identity and background was Angolan from kingdoms like

Ndongo of the Mbundu nation.

 

ANGOLANS ELSEWHERE IN NORTH AMERICA

 

To corroborate the great influx of Angolan-Africans com-

ing into Virginia in the 17th century we have records of

the Angolan Dutch of New Amsterdam, [today's New York] of

that period. The lists of baptisms show several Africans

surnamed "Angola" in the Reformed Dutch Church of New Am-

sterdam from 1639-1730. This period compares with the

time frame of Angolans arriving in Virginia.  At one time

Dutch farmers of New York's Hudson River Valley were the

largest importer of African slaves in North America.

 

While names of the Virginia Africans were frequently

changed to English, the names of Dutch Africans often di-

rectly reflected their African past.

 

1639-1649 NEW YORK BAPTISMAL RECORDS OF ANGOLANS

[includes parents, witnesses]

 

1639-Susanna D'Angola

 

1640-Samuel Angola, Isabel D'Angola, Emanuel van Angola,

Lucie Van Angola

 

1641-Susanna Van Angola, Jacom Anthoney Van Angola, Cleyn

Anthony Van Angola

 

1642-Susanna Simons Van Angola, Andrie Van Angola, Isabel

Van Angola, Maria Van Angola, Emanuel Swager Van Angola,

Andries Van Angola, Marie Van Angola

 

1643-Pallas-Negrinne Van Angola, Catharina Van Angola,

Anthony Van Angola,

 

1644-Anthony Van Angola-Negers, Lucretie d'Angola-

Negrinne

 

1645-Andries Van Angola, Mayken Van Angola

 

1646-Paulus Van Angola

 

1647-Marie Van Angola, Jan Van Angola-Neger

 

1648-Emanuel Angola

 

1649-Christyn Van Angola

 

Dutch New York Angolans and British Virginia Angolans ar-

rived by the same conveyance in the 17th century; priva-

teering men-o-war specializing in robbing Portuguese mer-

chant slavers.  The New York and later the Pennsylvania

mixed community became known as "Black Dutch".  The sou-

thern mixed groups became known as "Melungeon", and "Lum-

bee" among other names.

 

THE MALUNGU STORY IN A NUTSHELL

 

The original Melungeon community began with the arrival

of Mbundu-Angolans in Virginia in the early 1600s. These

African-Americans called themselves "malungu" from 1620

through 1700 during which time the first native African

generation of Kimbundu-speaking Angolans in Virginia were

still alive.  By the 1660s, the exclusive Angolan "malun-

gu" community had begun extending to include the mixed

descendants of whites and Indians who were intermarrying

into their families.

 

Then, in the 1670s, the Virginia legislature started ena-

cting a series of laws restricting certain rights of free

Angolans. Previously, many African-Americans had enjoyed

full civil liberties as freemen.  For example free blacks

could purchase white servants to work their growing

farms.  But in 1670 the Virginia legislature forbade free

African-Americans from owning white servants.  In 1691

Virginia outlawed the manumission of slaves and also for-

bade black and white intermarriages. In 1705 Virginia de-

nied slaves the ability to pay for their freedom when it

seized their farm stock which certain slave owners had

allowed them to raise.

 

The existance of these laws argue that virtually all non-

chattel African-Americans in Virginia born after 1720,

were born of free black ancestors; the original Angolan-

Americans of the 1600s.  Those original Angolans repre-

sent the only significant cohesive free black group able

to intermarry with free whites and move from place to

place beyond plantation bondage.

 

The colonial legislative restrictions on the freedom of

these black ancestors of Melungeons began to isolate

their mixed descendants as early as 1670.  Not entirely

white, not slave, and not Indian, these Melungeons be-

longed to a fourth class of America; free coloreds. They

are often found as frontiersmen who were forced by their

isolation to live between the "wilderness" and "civili-

zation."  In time, as Melungeons became whiter through

intermarriage, they were accepted as equals among fron-

tier whites, especially in the southern Gulf Coast

states carved from the Louisiana Territory.  From Florida

to Texas, Melungeons were thought to have only some "In-

dian" blood mixed with white blood.

 

By the time the frontier had vanished in the East with

the removal of the five Indian nations to Oklahoma in the

1830s, many Melungeons, like John and Matilda Hall Guynes

of Copiah County, Mississippi, were themselves becoming

wealthy slave owners in white society. Their descendants

merged into white society with hardly a ripple.  Those

Melungeons who remained in the original tidewater domin-

ions like Virginia, and especially in the Carolinas, con-

tinued to meet with prejudice because their black ances-

try was ancient knowledge there.  Old French-Spanish Lou-

isiana also held bitter, divisive memories in the bayous

and canebrakes.  The older American settlements knew Me-

lungeons were part African, the younger settlements only

suspected they had some Indian blood.

 

The Melungeons were constantly re-defining themselves de-

cade after decade from the 17th century through the 20th

century.  Old origin tales were forgotten, replaced by

newer legends.

 

The institution of chattel slavery had erased much of the

African ancestry of Melungeons before 1864. When slavery

was abolished after the Civil War, the next great shock

to the Melungeon body came with Virginia's so-called Rac-

ial Integrity Law of 1924.  Melungeons had escaped the

threat of slavery only to meet Jim Crow prejudice in the

South.  The registrar of the Virginia Breau of Vital Sta-

tistics in 1912 was a man named Walter Plecker.  Plecker

was influential in the enforcement of Virginia's notori-

ous "one-drop" law which was aimed at separating "pure

whites" from all other ethnics.  Plecker's state-wide

policies were studied by Adolph Hitler and his master

planners of ethnic murder in Nazi Germany. The scheme to

deny Melungeons full citizenship in America became the

blueprint for the greatest genocide in history.

 

The controversy over the African origin of the American

Melungeons fed into World War II; the world's most savage

war to date and a war which claimed the lives of many

thousands of white Americans.

 

The Melungeons, including the Gowens and all their name-

sakes, are a quiet, shy people, who have endured much per-

secution in America for nearly four hundred years. Their

survival is a miracle, much like the miraculous delivery

of another persecuted people.

 

  "And He said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy

  seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs,

  and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four

  hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall

  serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out

  with great substance.".

 

                         THE END

 

Biography:  Tim Hashaw is an investigative reporter work-

ing from East Texas.  He has filed stories for CBS, ABC

and NBC from network affiliates.  Tim has reported for

radio, television, and print.  Awards for Best Investiga-

tive Reporting from: The Radio and Television News Direc-

tors' Association (RTNDA), Associated Press, United Press

International, the National Headliners Club and others.  

 

 

CLARENCE BLAIN GOWEN MUST HAVE BEEN A GYPSEY

 

                By Charles Latimer Gowen

               

The dazzling opportunities in America at the turn of the

century caused many an adventurous young man to try his

hand at several professions.  My father, Clarence Blain

Gowen was such a man.  He was successively a steamship

owner, a pharmacist, a photographer, a newspaper editor,

a wholesale druggist, a Ford dealer, a ship chandler--

and for one day, he was an airmail pilot--at the age of

67.

 

Clarence Blain Gowen was born at Monticello ont Carteret

Point in Glynn County, Georgia January 29, 1871.  He was

the son of William Harrison Gowen [1842-1890] and Anne

Elizabeth Wright Gowen [1849-1934].  His paternal grand-

parents were James Gowen and Anna Abbott Gowen.

 

My father told me how he learned to swim.  At Easter his

mother bought a new straw hat for him at about age seven. 

After church, as he was walking by the millpond, a gust

of wind blew his new hat into the pond.  Knowing that if

he returned home without it, a whipping was in order. 

 

Without hesitating he jumped into the water and dog-pad-

dled to the floating hat.  He seized it with his teeth

and paddled back to the bank--where he realized that he

was now a swimmer.

 

William Harrison Gowen owned an interest in a steamship

which made ports of call along the seaboard.  Clarence

Blain Gowen was taken along on several voyages and immed-

iately developed his gypsy wanderlust.  He recalled a

particularly impressive trip when he and his mother re-

mained in New York City for an extended visit.

 

My father was sent to Moreland Park Military Academy in

Atlanta.  I recall seeing his cadet uniform which Dixie

Ma [as we called my grandmother] had preserved, all in

Confederate gray with large brass buttons and a swallow

tail.  Father told me that one of the most pleasant memo-

ries of cadet life was being invited to the home of Gen.

John Brown Gordon near the Academy for syllabub.  The

Confederate general was governor of Georgia after the war. 

The Battle of Atlanta was fought nearby, and the cadets

searched for minnie balls on the battlefield.

 

After graduation, father studied pharmacy in a school in

Philadelphia which later became part of the University of

Pennsylvania.  In 1897, he went to Sumner, Iowa to visit

Dr. W. L. Whitmire, the brother of his step-father.  He

liked the country and decided to open a drugstore in

Westgate, a nearby town of 300 population on the Chicago

& Great Western Railway. 

 

Drugstores were not too profitable in Iowa at the turn of

the century.  The doctors rolled their own pills and

filled their own prescriptions.  To augment the pharmacy,

father set up a photography studio.  Shortly afterward,

he launched the "Westgate Gazette," a weekly newspaper. 

I remember seeing the hand press on which the Gazette was

printed, the cases of type which was set by hand and old

issues of the paper on the floor.

 

About 1899, a telephone was installed, and my mother, Ed-

na Latimer came into Westgate to see this new wonder.  On

that occasion she met the new druggist.  A courtship de-

veloped, and father's horse and buggy afterward was often

seen traversing the four miles out to the Latimer farm. 

 

They were married on Valentine's Day, 1900.  After a wed-

ding trip to Georgia on St. Simons Island, they returned

to Iowa and lived in the flat above the drugstore.  After

a short time, they returned to Brunswick, Georgia where

my father organized a wholesale firm, Dixie Drug Company. 

Uncle Mansie, Dixie Ma and several friends invested in

the firm, only to see their investments vanish when the

firm failed. 

 

My parents headed back to Iowa.  I was born there on the

Latimer farm January 31, 1904.  About the same time, on a

return visit to Georgia father bought one of the new-fan-

gled automobiles--a second-hand American.  I remember it

well.  It had one seat for the driver and one for a pass-

enger, no windshield, a two-cylinder motor and was crank-