Stone Gardens: One of the first two U.S. Senators from Oklahoma had strong ties to Camp Creek and Sequoyah County
- Dennis McCaslin
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Robert Latham Owen Jr. was born on February 2, 1856 in Lynchburg, Virginia as the younger of two sons born to Robert Latham Owen Sr. and Narcissa Clark Chisholm Owen. His father a civil engineer and former surveyor, had risen to president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad.
The Owen side traces to Welsh roots with generations of doctors and teachers already established in Lynchburg. His mother, Narcissa born in 1831 at Webbers Falls in Indian Territory, carried Cherokee blood as the daughter of Old Settler Cherokee Chief Thomas Chisholm.
She worked as a music teacher and later gained notice as an artist who painted a Robert Latham Owen Jr. portrait of Sequoyah.
The family maintained membership in the Episcopal Church and lived in comfortable circumstances until the Panic of 1873 swept away their holdings. Robert Latham Owen Sr. died in 1873 when his son was seventeen.
Owen attended preparatory schools in Lynchburg and Baltimore. Scholarships arranged through his mother and, later a merit-based award from the university president carried him through Washington and Lee University. He completed his studies in 1877 as valedictorian and earned a Master of Arts degree.
With the family fortune gone and his father deceased, he and his mother relocated in 1879 to Indian Territory. They first settled near Camp Creek, close to Muldrow.
Owen accepted the post of principal teacher at the Cherokee Orphan Asylum at Salina. After eighteen months, he advanced to secretary of the Cherokee Board of Education.
He studied law, privately passed the bar in 1880, and began a practice in Muskogee. For several months, he owned and edited the Vinita Indian Chieftain newspaper. He also presided over the Indian International Fair at Muskogee.
In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him federal Indian agent for the Five Civilized Tribes, a position regarded at the time as the most influential governmental role in the territory. He held the office until 1889 and settled numerous legal disputes involving Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole lands.
As an attorney he represented the Cherokee Nation and other tribes in federal court cases that ultimately secured millions of dollars in compensation for land claims.
.Owen organized the First National Bank of Muskogee in 1909 and served as its president for the next decade. The institution survived every financial crisis of the era without a single failure. He participated as a Democratic committeeman for Indian Territory at the national conventions of 1892 and 1896.
Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s he convened meetings to advocate separate statehood for Indian Territory. In 1905 he helped organize and lead the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention in Muskogee the effort to create the State of Sequoyah from Indian Territory lands.
When Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907, Owen entered the race for the United States Senate. He won the Democratic preferential primary and the state legislature formally elected him, along with Thomas Pryor Gore, as one of the state's first two senators. The pair drew lots to decide term lengths and Owen secured the longer initial service.
He took his seat in December 1907 and remained in office until 1925 completing three full terms. As the first chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, he co sponsored the Glass-Steagall Act that established the Federal Reserve System in 1913. He also advanced farm loan legislation and consistently defended the economic interests of Oklahoma constituents, including those in the oil industry.
Owen married and maintained a household that kept strong ties to his mother until her death in 1911. Narcissa had published memoirs in 1907 recounting her Cherokee heritage and life in Virginia and Indian Territory.
His wife predeceased him in 1946. The couple had no children prominently recorded in public accounts. In retirement, he practiced law and lobbied from Washington D C. He briefly supported Herbert Hoover in 1928 before returning to the Democratic fold after Franklin D Roosevelt election. During the Great Depression, he proposed inflation measures to stimulate the economy and critiqued Federal Reserve policies. In his final years nearly blind he developed an international phonetic alphabet intended for diplomatic use.
Owen died on July 19 1947 in Washington D C at age ninety one from complications following prostate surgery. He was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery in Lynchburg Virginia in the amily plotalongside his mother, Narcissa his father, Robert Latham Owen Sr., and other relatives.
Though his professional life centered on Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation he returned at the end to the Virginia soil where he began.
