Robert Latham Owen Jr. (Cherokee: Oconostota; February 2, 1856 – July 19, 1947) was one of the first two U.S. senators from Oklahoma. He served in the Senate between 1907 and 1925.
Born into affluent circumstances in antebellum Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of a railroad company president, Owen suffered financial ruin by the Panic of 1873 and his father died while he was still in his teens.
Owen, who was Cherokee on his mother's side, responded by heading west to Indian Territory, where he built a new life as, in turn, a schoolteacher working with Cherokee orphans; a lawyer, administrator and journalist; a federal Indian agent; and the founder and first president of a community bank. Among the achievements that brought him to wider public notice, and helped pave the way for his election to the U.S. Senate in 1907 when Oklahoma (incorporating the former Indian Territory) achieved statehood, was his success as a lawyer in 1906 in winning a major court case on behalf of the Eastern Cherokees seeking compensation from the U.S. Government for eastern lands the Cherokees had lost at the time of the Indian removals.
A Democrat active in many progressive causes, including efforts to strengthen public control of government, and the fight against child labor, Owen is especially remembered as the Senate sponsor of the Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created the Federal Reserve System. In discussions at the time, he resisted a campaign to put the Federal Reserve formally under the control of the banking industry, and the 1913 Act emerged broadly in line with Owen's compromise proposal, creating a central Federal Reserve Board nominated by the Government alongside twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks dominated by the larger banks. Owen subsequently became highly critical of what he saw as the Federal Reserve's bias towards deflationary policies during the early 1920s and again in the early 1930s, which he attributed to excessive influence by the largest banks upon the Fed, and which he identified as largely responsible for causing the Great Depression: a minority view at the time, but one that has, in recent decades, gained wide acceptance among conservative economists (having been popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s). In 1920 Owen unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency.
Early and family life Owen was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on February 2, 1856, the younger of two sons of Confederate Col. Robert L. Owen Sr. (1825–1873), a civil engineer and former surveyor who had become president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, and his wife Narcissa Clark Chisholm Owen (Cherokee Nation). His family attended an Episcopal Church in his youth.
Owen's paternal ancestors had emigrated from Wales, and the family had a record of public service as doctors and teachers. His grandfather, Dr. William Owen, and uncle, Dr. William Otway Owen Sr. (1820–1892), both practiced medicine in Lynchburg, and the latter served as surgeon-in-chief in charge of thirty hospitals in Lynchburg (which became a major wartime hospital center) throughout the Civil War.Houck, Peter W. A Prototype of a Confederate Hospital Center in Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchburg, Warwick House Publishing, 1986. His father Robert Latham Owen Sr. served in the Virginia State Senate after the American Civil War.
During Owen's boyhood, the family lived in Lynchburg's best-known mansion, Point of Honor. Owen attended private schools in Lynchburg and in Baltimore, Maryland.Narcissa tells us that, at the time of their father's death, her sons had just completed their five years of studies at the Merillat Institute, in the suburbs of Baltimore, "a classical school", where they studied "Latin, Greek, French, German, and mathematics." A Cherokee Woman's America: Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831–1907. Edited by Karen L. Kilcup. Gainesville, FL. University Press of Florida, 2005. p. 117.
The American Civil War destroyed most of Virginia's railroads. In late 1867, Robert Latham Owen Sr. resigned his position as president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railway because he opposed a proposed railway consolidation led by the colorful and highly political former Confederate General (and future U.S. senator, 1881–1887) William Mahone, who replaced him as president.According to Kilcup, p.100, her husband and his company opposed Mahone, whose Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad acquired the Virginia and Tennessee Railway by purchasing sufficient stock. Mahone used his political clout to merge several railroads, including the Norfolk and Petersburg Company, the Virginia and Tennessee and the South Side Railroad, into the new Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (its initials, AM&O, some quipped meant "All Mine and Otelia's", referred to Mahone and his equally colorful wife, Otelia).R.L. Owen Sr's service as a state senator is confirmed in Scales, James R. and Danney Goble. Oklahoma Politics, a History. Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. p. 33.
In June 1873, however, when Owen was 16, his father died a financially ruined man, due to the Panic of 1873, which struck the consolidating railroads especially hard. Writing in 1934, Owen described the family's hard times: "the value of my father's property was completely destroyed, and my mother, from a life of abundance, was suddenly compelled to earn her living by teaching music."Owen, Robert L. "Foreword" (dated October 29, 1934) to Money Creators by Gertrude M. Coogan, Chicago, Sound Money Press, 1935. The consolidated Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad, successor to Robert Latham Owen Sr.'s old Virginia and Tennessee Company, is known to have gone into receivership in 1873. With support from scholarships, initially obtained via his mother's contacts, but subsequently including the 1876 merit-based President's scholarship, Owen graduated in 1877 as valedictorian from Washington and Lee University. He also received the university's gold medal for debating prowess.Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831–1907. Washington, D.C., 1907; and Keso, Edward Elmer. The Senatorial Career of Robert Latham Owen. Gardenvale, Canada: Garden City Press, 1938. His older brother, William Otway Owen Jr. (1854–1924), meanwhile, attended the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia, and went on to a medical career with the U.S. Army, eventually retiring with the rank of colonel.W.O. Owen Jr. originally retired from the U.S. Army around 1905 with the rank of Major, and is referred to as retired with this rank in his mother's memoirs (1907). Recalled to service during World War I, he retired for the second time with the rank of Colonel. See Virginia Genealogy Trails, "Virginia Military Institute: Class of 1876" (note that the transcription erroneously records the last name as Owens), accessed on 03/01/11 at: http://genealogytrails.com/vir/rockbridge/vmi/cadet_class_registers/cadets_1876.html.
Owen's mother, Narcissa Chisholm Owen (1831–1911), was part Cherokee. She did much to foster her son's career, as well as becoming a distinguished painter. In 1907 she published memoirs about her life lived between Cherokee and mainstream U.S. societies, which have more recently attracted scholarly attention when republished in a critical edition in 2005.A Cherokee Woman's America: Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831–1907. Edited by Karen L. Kilcup. Gainesville, FL. University Press of Florida, 2005 However, the precise extent of her (and thus his) Cherokee ancestry is unclear. Owen's listing on the Dawes Rolls, dating from around 1900, records him as 1/16 Cherokee by blood."Native American Data for Robert L Owen." Native American Database. Retrieved July 18, 2012. However, Narcissa's memoirs (1907) self-describe her as 1/16 Cherokee, which if correct would imply that her son was 1/32 Cherokee.Memoirs (pp. 43–44) portray her Cherokee descent as stemming from her great great grandmother Queen Quatsis, and mentions no other Cherokee or other line of descent. Narcissa's own account runs the line of descent from: (1) Queen Quatsis (by assumption, fullblood Cherokee), via (2) The daughter of Quatsis and John Beamor (English), Peggy Beamor Holmes (1/2 Cherokee), (3) The daughter of Peggy and Col. Holmes (English), Martha Holmes Chisholm (1/4 Cherokee), (4) The son of Martha and John D. Chisholm (of Scottish ancestry), Thomas Chisholm (1/8 Cherokee), to (5) The daughter of Thomas Chisholm and Malinda Wharton Chisholm (of Irish ancestry), Narcissa Chisholm Owen (1/16 Cherokee). Some secondary sources describe Narcissa as 1/8th CherokeeSee e.g., Scales, James R. and Danney Goble. Oklahoma Politics: a History. page 33, Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press, 1982; as well as the unqualified quotation of this point from Scales and Goble in Brandon, Stephen. "'Mother Of U.S. Senator An Indian Queen': Cultural Challenge and Appropriation in The Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831–1907." Studies in American Indian Literatures, Series 2, Volume 13, Number 2 & 3, Summer/Fall 2001. The modern editor of Narcissa's memoirs speculates that Narcissa might have missed "one generation or possibly two" in her family tree; adjusting for this possibility might further dilute her Cherokee blood.Kilcup 2005 edition, p. xxiii and following chart raises the possibility that Narcissa might have missed "one generation, or possibly two" between John Beamor (and his wife Quatsis) and Peggy Beamor, taken by Narcissa to be their daughter. The problem is one of dates. Narcissa tells us that Beamor and Quatsis met around 1699, when he was about 23 and she about 16; whereas Kilcup estimates that Peggy married Col. Holmes, while still fertile, circa 1776. If these dates come even close to being accurate, they would not appear consistent with Peggy being Quatsis's daughter, hence Kilcup's speculation that a generation (or two) might be missing from Narcissa's family tree. Of course, whether adjusting for any such omission would increase or further reduce Owen's share of Cherokee blood would depend on the ethnic background of the "missing" spouse(s). However, Narcissa had been raised among Cherokees and was proud of her Cherokee heritage, colorfully describing her father, Thomas Chisholm (a leader of the "Old Settlers" who moved west before the Trail of Tears), as "the last hereditary war chief of the Western Cherokees."Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831–1907 Washington, D.C., 1907, p. 43. In their commentaries, Kilcup and Brandon have questioned the accuracy of Narcissa's description of her father, arguing that chiefly positions were not hereditary, and that Narcissa conflated the concepts of "chief" and "war chief". Narcissa also gave both her sons parallel Indian names derived from famous Cherokee chiefs: she named Robert Oconostota after a noted Cherokee chief of the late eighteenth century who was also, she claimed, her own great-great-uncle.Memoirs of Narcissa Owen and Keso, Edward Elmer. The Senatorial Career of Robert Latham Owen. Gardenvale, Canada: Garden City Press, 1938, p.13. Narcissa cites Oconostota as a son of Queen Quatsis and John Beamor. Narcissa gave her older son William the Cherokee name of Caulunna, meaning "The Raven," after another Cherokee chief, whom she describes as Queen Quatsis' brother.
Early career in Oklahoma