bios

Our evidence for John Cowan's being Esther Cowan’s father is circumstantial. His was the only Cowan family in Indiana during Esther's childhood. . Records show that John Cowan lost his wife Margaret Weir about the time that Esther was ten years old. Isaiah and Elizabeth Cooper were given Esther to rear in Clark County, Indiana It was common to give children to relatives or friends to rear after a frontiersman lost his wife. Military records show that John Cowan and his son James Cowan served in the same company of roving rangers during the War of 1812 as did Isaiah Cooper, and so they were well acquainted with each other. The county history of Pike County, Illinois, shows that Enoch Cooper married "Esther Cooper, adopted daughter of Isaiah Cooper,” in November of 1829. Rose Cooper Goodrich testified to her grandmother's maiden name being Cowan. Genealogy records of John Cowan in a book co-written by his granddaughter, Laura Cowan Blaine, show a four-year gap between the births of children where Esther would fit in. Esther Cowan named a daughter Rosanna Margaret Cooper, probably for her mother. Isaiah and Elizabeth Cooper named a daughter Margaret Cooper in 1808, probably for their friend Margaret Weir Cowan. Census records show that Esther was born in Tennessee, where John and Margaret Cowan were living in 1803.
     John Cowan was born December 14, 1768, in what is now Rockbridge County, Virginia, the son of Samuel Cowan and Ann Walker. Rockbridge County, which is nestled between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains at the southern end of the Valley of Virginia, was then on the frontier. Rockbridge County was formed in 1778. When John was born, the area where the Cowans lived was part of Augusta County. The Cowans probably lived near other family members along Hays and Walker creeks near the present-day Augusta-Rockbridge county line. There were many other Scotch-Irish families in the area, and kinsmen of the Cowans and Walkers: the Moores, Campbells, Weirs, Todds, Houstons, and Breckenridges. Several famous persons emerged in this branch of our family: Sam Houston, the hero of Texas; Joseph Reddeford Walker, the mountain man for whom several geographical locations are named; Mary Ann Montgomery [Mrs. Nathan Bedford Forest] wife of the Civil War cavalry leader; and Jeb Stuart, also a Civil War cavalry leader. The two presidents Bush are also descended from a Weir, probably of our family.
      In the late 1760’s many family members left the Valley of Virginia to go to what is now Orange County, North Carolina. John’s parents moved there about 1767 as did his grandparents John Walker III [1705-1778] and Ann Houston Walker and many Cowan and Walker uncles and aunts. For some members of the family, North Carolina would remain their home, but for Samuel Cowan and his brothers and John and Ann Houston Walker and their children, North Carolina was merely a respite.
     In 1772 the Cowans and Walkers left North Carolina and settled in the Clinch River Valley in southwestern Virginia near Cumberland Gap, the historic pioneer pass through the Appalachian mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee. John Walker III and his wife Ann Houston settled on a 300 acre tract of land they named Broadmeadows at the “sink” of Sinking Creek. Nearby, Samuel and Ann Walker Cowan settled on both sides of McKinney’s Run [now called Cowan’s Creek]. This area along the Clinch River was called Castle’s Woods. The area then designated as Castle’s Woods today lies in present-day Russell and Scott counties, Virginia. Cowan Creek, where the Cowans lived, lies on the slopes of Copper Ridge in Scott County, but the town of Castlewood lies in present-day Russell County. Samuel Cowan’s brother David Cowan had lived at Castle’s Woods since 1769 and had built a fort on his land ten miles upriver from where his brother Samuel settled.
     There were two forts in Castle’s Woods. The one on David Cowan’s land was called Cowan’s Fort but in official correspondences it was referred to as Fort Russell because the commander of the militia there was Capt. William Russell. This fort was also called Fort Preston, Bickley's Fort, or Blackmore's Fort. It was located behind the present-day Masonic Lodge Hall in Castlewood, Russell County, Virginia. The other fort,    Moore’s Fort, was the home and fort of two sisters and brothers-in-law of Samuel Cowan. It was a larger and more substantial fort. The brothers-in-law were first cousins to Ann Walker Cowan, sons of her aunt, Jane Walker Moore.
     It was to these forts that area settlers would flee in times of Indian peril. Moore’s Fort was the larger of the two. It generally had about twenty families living there and about twenty or twenty-five militia soldiers stationed there. During Dunmore’s War in 1774, Capt. Russell and the settlers of Castle’s Woods worked together to expand the forts to make them large enough to accommodate the area’s families. Houston’s Fort, on Big Moccasin Creek was the home and fort of William Houston, a brother of John’s grandmother.
     The Castle’s Woods settlers also worked together to support a teacher for their children, James Russell. For a number of years he taught the children in the area and was John Cowan’s teacher. When a militia officer accused Russell of being a deserter, he was able to clear himself of the charges, but to save his good name, he joined up for service in Kentucky and left the community in 1778.
         The Scotch-Irish, persecuted for generations by the British, had no love for them and vice-versa. The British encouraged these thorns in their side to settle on the frontier as a buffer from the Indians for the established English tidewater settlements. When the Revolution came, the Scotch-Irish, almost to a man, volunteered for the Patriot cause.
     The British were quick to make alliances with the Indians, and so it was that while the Declaration of Independence was being signed in Philadelphia, Indian tribes allied with the British were approaching Castle’s Woods, then the westernmost settlement on Virginia’s frontier. Learning of some 300 Indians’ presence in the valley, John’s father, Samuel Cowan, went to spread the word to his wife’s uncle William Houston and those “forted up” at nearby Houston’s Station [a.k.a. Houston’s Fort] that the Indians were in the Clinch Valley. His journey would have taken him southeast over Copper Ridge into Copper Creek Valley and then over Moccasin Ridge into Big Moccasin Creek Valley to Houston’s Fort.
      Cowan spent the night at the fort and in the morning a rider had come to report that the residents at Fort Russell [a.k.a Cowan’s Fort] were being menaced by the Indians. Hearing that his own family was in danger at Fort Russell, Samuel left the safety of Houston’s Station despite warnings as to the danger. He was determined to go to his endangered family. Just outside the Houston’s Station palisade he was immediately shot and scalped by the Indians. He was brought into the fort and died that evening. His bloody horse, spooked by the shooting, had returned home to Fort Russell where Samuel’s family saw blood on the saddle of the riderless horse and knew that Samuel had met his end. Young John’s mother fainted away upon seeing her husband’s blood-spattered horse. The seven-year-old boy would have witnessed this event.
    In the spring of 1778 a coalition of northern and southern Indians again attacked Castle’s Woods. Ann Walker Cowan had just begun walking the two miles from Fort Russell to Moore’s Fort with her brother Samuel Walker and another man. The families were forted up due to the Indian danger. The three were crossing a field planted in rye not far from Fort Russell when they were attacked by Shawnee Indians. The Indians shot and scalped Samuel Walker, and took Ann Cowan and her daughter Jane Cowan captive. A third man was only injured, and he managed to return to the fort and warn those inside. This “third man” may have been ten year old John Cowan because we are told in the Maxwell History and Genealogy that John ran for his life with the Indians right behind him in pursuit. He just made it inside the gate of the fort as an Indian raised his tomahawk to dispatch him.
         In a nearby field, eleven-year-old William Walker, John’s first cousin, just a year older than John, was riding a plow horse while an uncle plowed his field. Delaware Indians stormed out of the adjacent forest and shot the uncle in both arms. He began running toward his cabin, but he was downed just as he approached his cabin. They quickly tomahawked and scalped him. William attempted to reach the cabin as well, but the Indians quickly overcame him and took him captive. He was carried away to a spot that the Indians, who were from north of the Ohio River, planned to rendezvous with the Shawnees after the attack, before heading north. William Walker was a son of John’s uncle John Walker IV. John was never to see his cousin again.
     John’s brother Jim [James Benjamin Cowan], who was about eight years old at the time, was captured by the Cherokees and taken away to their nation and adopted into their tribe. He did not make his escape from the Cherokees until he was about fifteen. [These ages are my estimates. They do not agree with the stories told by Dr. James Benjamin Cowan of Tullahoma, TN, who was rather inventive in his telling of the family history]
      Ann Cowan was taken by the Shawnees back to their predetermined rendezvous with the Delawares. When William Walker was brought in by the Delawares, he was surprised to see his aunt and cousin Jane there. Young Jane, who continued to cry loudly, was suddenly tomahawked by an Indian, probably because the crying girl was a threat to their being located. The Indians told the captives not to speak to one another.
    After crossing the Ohio River, Ann Walker Cowan was taken by her Shawnee captors to the west, and William Walker was taken by his Delaware captors to the east. Looking backwards as they were led away, aunt and nephew sadly took one last look at each other. They were never to see each other again.
     Ann arrived in the Shawnee Indian village where captives were made to run through Indians lined on two sides with sticks. The captive had to run through the lines and get to the other end. The Indians would beat the captive with the sticks as he/she passed through. If he/she failed to reach the other end or displayed less than strong behavior through the ordeal, he/she would then be tortured and burned to death. Mary must have passed through the ordeal satisfactorily because she was kept as a slave of a squaw for the next six or seven years.
     John’s grandfather, John Walker III, was greatly grieved at the loss of so many of his family: two of his children, a son-in-law, and three grandchildren. He died later that year.
    Even with the protection of the forts, life on the frontier was precarious and brutal: Indians attacked Cowan's Fort again in 1779 and Abraham Cooper and his son were killed. [Not connected to our Coopers-- yet] Another son, Christopher, documented this event in his application for a Revolutionary War pension and declared that "two young women was taken prisoner and he was one of the party that pursued & retook them again."
    It was about 1783 that John Cowan moved to what was then Greene County, Tennessee. It was soon after this move that the heirs of Samuel Cowan had their father’s land surveyed. On August 20, 1784, the Washington County, VA, Book #1 of the Record of Surveys and Entries, page 153, this survey, done more than a year earlier, is entered:

     Surveyed for John Cowan, heirs etc. 230 acres of land in Washington County, by virtue of a certificate [some kind of deed], lying on both sides of McKinney’s Run [Cowan Creek], a south branch of Clinch River, and beginning at the foot of Copper Creek Ridge at a poplar corner to William Cowan’s land he now lives on and with the lines thereof etc. March 25, 1783.
     We the Commissioners for the District of Washington and Montgomery Counties do certify that John Cowan, heir at law of Samuel Cowan deceased, is entitled to 284 acres of land by settlement in the year 1772, lying in Washington County on a branch known by the name of McKenney’s Run, and adjoining William Cowan. As witness our hands the 8th day of August 1781. Teste James Reid, C. C. Jos. Cabell, Harry Innes, M. Cabell, Commissioners

     On the same page in the Book of Surveys is an entry for John’s uncle David Cowan’s land. This makes it likely that David Cowan had moved to Greene County, Tennessee, also.     Where the Cowans moved to was the part of Greene County that became part of Knox County in 1792 and in 1795 became Blount County. Many of the Scotch-Irish were moving to this area: the Cowans, Walkers, Houstons, Gillespies, McClungs, Weirs, etc.
     On 18 November 1788, the following document was recorded in the new Russell County, Virginia, clearly a sale of the land Samuel Cowan had settled upon arriving in the Clinch Valley, the same land that had been surveyed in 1783:
THIS INDENTURE made the eighteenth day of November in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight between James McKinney, of the County of Russell, in the State of Virginia of the one part and John Cowan, of Green County and state of North Carolina [Tennessee was still officially part of North Carolina at this time.] , of the other part witnesseth that the said John Cowan for and in consideration of the sum of sixty-six pounds of current money of Virginia to him in hand paid by the said James McKinney doth grant, bargain and sell unto the said James McKinney and his heirs a certain tract or parcel of land in the County of Russell containing two hundred and thirty-five acres by survey bearing date the twenty-fifth day of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, lying and being in the County of Russell, on both sides of McKinney’s Run a south branch of Clinch River and bounded as followeth, to wit: Beginning at the foot of Copper Creek Ridge at a poplar corner to William Cowan’s land and with a line thereof north fifty-one degrees west one hundred and fifty-three poles to a white oak and ash sapling on the east side of the ridge, North thirty degrees east one hundred and fifty-five poles to a black oak and a white oak at the foot of a rocky ridge thence, leaving said line, North forty-seven degrees East, one hundred and forty-nine poles crossing the branch to two white oaks at the foot of a ridge South thirty-two degrees east forty poles to a black and white oak of the side of a ridge south forty-three degrees west forty-five poles to three white oak saplings on the west side of a ridge south Twenty-five degrees east eighty poles to a beech near a branch south four degrees west one hundred poles crossing the branch to a white oak and ridge at the foot of Copper Creek ridge and along thereon south forty four degrees west one hundred and twenty-six poles to the BEGINNING, together with all its appurtenances to have and to hold the said tract or parcel of land with its appurtenances unto the said James McKinney and his heirs to the sole use and behoof of him the said James McKinney and his heirs forever and the said John Cowen for himself and his heirs doth covenant with the said James McKinney and his heirs that the said John Cowen and his heirs the said land with the appurtenances unto the said James McKinney and his heirs against all persons what so ever will forever warrant and defend. In Witness whereof the said John Cowen hath hereunto subscribed his name and affix3ed his seal the day and year avove written. John Cowen. [seal] At a Court held for Russell County the 18th day of November 1788. This indenture of Bargain and sale of land from John Cowen to James McKinney was acknowledged in court and ordered to be recorded. Teste: Henry Dickenson, C. R. C. A copy, Teste: E. R. Combs, Clerk Circuit Court, Russell County, Va.

     [The next story was extracted from a version told by Dr. James Benjamin Cowan of Tullahoma, TN, a grandson of James Benjamin Cowan, as written by P. D. Cowan. Dr. Cowan had so many errors in his story that I have had to retell the story as I believe it happened, based upon MY research. Some details of the story may not be accurate, but it is believed that the essence is correct.][If you ever come across P. D. Cowan’s The Shadow of Chilhowee, don’t bother to read it. It is not history, but fantasy.]
   John’s mother resurfaced in a rather dramatic way about 1785. A half-breed French-Indian and his Indian wife arrived at the Shawnee village where Ann was captive. She convinced them to help her escape. They buried her under a pile of furs in their canoe and headed to a French trading post somewhere in Kentucky.   Arriving at the trading post and knowing that the Indians would follow after discovering Ann’s absence, the half-breed and the owner of the trading post hid Ann in a small cellar under the trading post floor and sent a rider to seek help among Ann’s people.
    The rider rode day and night to what is now Blount County, Tennessee, where Ann somehow had learned that her Scotch-Irish community had moved. The Blount County settlers were assembled outdoors at meeting [religious services] listening to a sermon. He rode to a stump, which served as the podium, and called out, “Is there a man here named Russell, Major Russell? Or Colonel Walker or any man named Cowan?”
    Major Russell spoke up. “I’m Major Russell. What is it you want?”
    The rider spoke excitedly, “There is a woman at the French trading post making her escape. Her name is Ann Cowan and the Indians are in pursuit to recapture her, and I am to come here and tell her friends to come quickly as possible to rescue her. Within an hour a well-provisioned army of one hundred men was on a forced march northward toward the trading post, among them Ann Cowan’s sons.
    It was dark when the small army reached the trading post. The Indians had been loitering around the trading post asking questions about their missing slave and probably buying whisky at the post. Hearing the approaching hoofbeats, the Indians fled as Major Russell and his men arrived. And from the dark depths of the cellar, still in the dress of the Shawnees, Ann Cowan emerged and was reunited with her now-grown sons.
     In Deed Book 1, page 44 refers to John being in Greene County on the 10 of November, 1788.
     From the book American Militia in the Frontier Wars, 1790-1796, page 102, we learn that John Cowan served in Captain Hugh Beard’s Company of Guards at the treaty on the Holston River near the mouth of the French Broad River, May 28 to July 11, 1791.
On September 24, 1799, in Deed Book 1, page 298, a transaction was recorded between John Cowan of Knox County, Southwest Territory and James McKinney of Russell County. It is probably a lease or a deed of sale.
   On June 23, 1796, John Cowan II, his uncle William Cowan, and Robert Wood were among the registered surveyors of the Powell Valley Tract in Southwest Virginia and Tennessee. John was a newlywed at the time. [p.66 Calendar of the Tennessee and King’s Mountain Papers of the Draper Collection of Manuscript, Wisconsin Historical Society Publications, Madison, WS, 1929]
      John’s mother had retreated to Rockbridge County after her captivity among the Indians. On May 9, 1796, John paid a $150 marriage bond there to marry Margaret Weir [c.1778-c.1811], daughter of James Weir of Rockbridge County. We know nothing else about the Scotch-Irish Weir family except that it moved in tandem with the Walkers, Cowans, Houstons, and Campbells. Both George Bush and his son George W. Bush are descended from a Weir/Ware of Blount County, Tennessee. Ware is an alternate spelling of the name Weir. They are probably distant cousins of ours. Blount County is where many of our Weir, Cowan, and Walker relatives relocated. These men below are their ancestors:
     William Gault Wear, Blount Co., Tennessee 11 Dec. 1817-Eureka Springs, Ark. c. 1900, m. Cooper Co., Missouri, 2 Nov. 1837; son of James Hutchenson Weir.
James Hutchenson Weir, Va. 30 Sept. 1789-Cooper Co., Mo. Apr. 1832, Knoxville, Tenn. 27 Oct. 1812
     About 1800 many of the residents of Blount County were moving southwestward into the Sewannee Valley in what was to become Franklin County, Tennessee, which abuts the Alabama state line. John’s brother Jim moved there and John moved there briefly, but we are not sure when. There was another John Cowan there, a cousin of our John’s no doubt, so it is impossible to discern which of the records are our John Cowan. The other John Cowan was elected as one of the first county commissioners of Franklin County in December of 1807. The first court met at the home of Major William Russell, the man who had lived at Castle’s Woods with the Cowans in Virginia, and then in Blount County with them. Later in Franklin County a town would spring up that would be named Cowan, Tennessee, named for a family member.
     We know that John moved his family to Mercer County, Kentucky about 1804. In Beckwith’s History of Montgomery County, Indiana, in John’s son’s biography, it states that John had lived in Tennessee for twenty years, so our dates are about correct here. It was in Mercer County that John and Margaret’s daughter Sally was born. There were probably Cowan relatives already living in Mercer County. Another John Cowan had taken the census of that county in 1777. That John was likely a brother to the subject John Cowan’s father, Samuel Cowan.
     About 1807 the Cowans moved again, to what is now Charlestown, Clark County, Indiana. John had purchased the land grant of one of George Rogers Clark’s soldiers there. The grant contained 8 acres in the settlement and 100 acres outside for farming.
      Margaret Weir Cowan died about 1811, leaving John alone with their seven or more children. It is believed that John turned over the care of Esther and an infant daughter to Isaiah and Elizabeth Montier Cooper at this time. This was a common occurrence on the frontier. The men had to work and had no one to care for an infant. Why Esther also was let go may have been because Esther was attached to Rachel Cooper, who was her own age, or perhaps because she was very attached to the baby. This can only be speculation, but it was a common occurrence.
     Margaret may have already been dead when John served under General William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippicanoe on 7 Novembber 1811, in Captain Charles Beggs’ Company of Light Dragoons of the Indiana Militia. In this battle the Shawnees, fighting under the leadership of “The Prophet,” brother of Tecumseh, were defeated. Shortly thereafter, the War of 1812 began and the Indians allied themselves with the British.
     On 1 April 1813, at Charlestown, Clark County, IN, John joined Captain James Bigger’s company of mounted rangers who roamed throughout Indiana to prevent Indian attack. The company was mostly made up of men from Clark County, but there were also about eleven men from Vallonia. John’s fifteen year old son, James Weir Cowan, also enlisted in the company. Isaiah Cooper, whose son Enoch would one day marry John’s daughter, Esther Cowan, was also a member. Each ranger received a dollar a day and had to furnish his own horse, arms, provisions, and ammunition. John and James were privates. Their company was in the regiment of Colonel William Russell, the man who had commanded Fort Russell at Castle’s Woods. The soldiers were fighting against the famed Shawnee Indian Tecumseh and his allies.
     Captain Bigger’s company took part on June 11, 1813, in a deployment commanded by General Joseph Bartholemew. They attacked the Delaware Indians’ upper towns on the west fork of the White River. When the force reached the Indian towns, they found that they had mostly been destroyed already, probably by a company from White Water settlement. They did find one band of Indians near Strawtown and surrounded them. The Indians were boiling deer heads in a large copper kettle. The Indians fled with but one casualty to the whites: David Hays was wounded. David Maxwell [one day to be John Cowan’s brother-in-law] dressed Hays’ wounds. The patient was then carried on a horse litter to the mouth of Flat Rock, now Columbus, Indiana, where two canoes were made. With a guard, Hays was sent back to his family in Vallonia, but he died shortly afterward from his wounds at the fort. The captured Indian horses and kettle were sold to the highest bidder in the expedition.
     John remained unmarried through most of the decade. His daughter Mary Ann Cowan, about twelve when her mother died, probably assumed the household duties. Mary Ann died in August of 1819, and this probably prompted John to remarry. Four months later, on 30 December 1819 in Jefferson County, IN, he married Anna Maxwell, 37, a spinster woman who was the sister of David Maxwell, who had served with John Cowan and Isaiah Cooper in the same company during the War of 1812. Their marriage was performed by Rev. John McClung, who was a minister in the Reformed or Newlight Church.
   Apparently John was feeling that it was a time for some changes in his life. Not only did he take a new wife, but, in 1820, soon after their marriage, he moved his family to the newly-created capital of Indiana, the village of Indianapolis. They lived there about two years; during that time a son, John Maxwell Cowan, was born on 6 December 1821. Because Anna was along in years, this was to be John and her only child.
The following year, 1822, the Cowans moved to Montgomery County, Indiana. There they purchased land 2 ½ miles southwest of the town of Crawfordsville on Oldfield’s Creek John was fifty-four at the time. The land would have needed clearing. John had two grown sons at home, Jim, 23, and Walker, 20. The three men would have worked together to make a cabin and farm out of the virgin land. Original land patent entries of Montgomery County show that on 4 July 1822 John purchased or claimed 80 acres that were the east one half of the southeast one quarter of Township 18, Section 11, Range 5. It was patent #135496.
For the next ten years John and Anna lived on this land, but in 1832 John became ill. He was either visited at or taken to the home of his daughter Sarah “Sally” Cowan Maxwell in nearby Frankfort, in Clinton County. Sally was married to Anna’s nephew Samuel Dunn Maxwell. John’s sons probably took care of the farm in his absence. It was in Sally’s home that John died on 17 August 1832, at the age of sixty-three. He was buried in the Old Town Cemetery in Frankfurt.
          By then John’s daughter, Esther Cowan, had married Enoch Cooper and was living in Pike County, Illinois. Only the previous month she had given birth to their first child, and Enoch was just returning from having served in the Black Hawk War. Whether or not Esther had maintained contact with her natural father is lost to us. She is not mentioned in his will.
     James Montgomery was the executor of John’s will, which was filed for probate on 13 May 1833, in Montgomery County, IN. It stated as follows:

     In the name of God, Amen. I, John Cowan, of Montgomery county of the State of Indiana, considering the frailty of my body and the uncertainty of this mortal life, and being of sound mind to make this my last will and testament, in the manner & form following, that is to say, I give & bequeath to my beloved wife Anna all of my personal property to have the use of while she lives single: after my death I also give & bequeath to my two sons, James W. Cowan and John M. Cowan, my land with all the apurtenances [sic] thereon & belonging; situate in Montgomery county & state above written to belong to them and their heirs forever, and at the death of either of them, if he died having no issue, then his part to descend to the other, and also that my beloved wife Anny is to have her part support off the plantation while she does live single, after my death, and at ther death all my personal property to decend [sic] to my two sons above named, each to possess an equal part; I also give and bequeath to my son Samuel W. Cowan, ten dollars to be paid to him in twelve months after my death; I also give & bequeath to my daughter Sally Maxwell ten dollars to be paid to her in twelve months after my death. I hereby appoint James Montgomery of Parke county, and state aforesaid executor of this my last will and testament. In witness whereof I do here unto set my hand and seal this first day of November, in the year of our Lord 1828. Signed, sealed, and delivered by the above named John Cowan to be his last will and testament in the presence of us who have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses in the presence of the testator.
Michael Montgomery                                                    John Cowan
James Montgomery

This was an inventory filed 10 July 1833 of the personal property of John Cowan:
1 sythe [sic] and findings---------------------------2.00
2 hoes-------------------------------------------------   .75
1 shovel-----------------------------------------------   .37 ½
1 log chain-------------------------------------------- 4.50
1 falling axe-------------------------------------------1.50
1 iron wedge------------------------------------------   .37 ½
   horse geers------------------------------------------8.50
1 set brest chains-------------------------------------1.00
4 augers----------------------------------------------- 2.25
1 pot rack--------------------------------------------- 1.00
1 man saddle------------------------------------------1.00
1 side saddle------------------------------------------2.00
1 cory [?] plow---------------------------------------3.50
1 double tree------------------------------------------ .75
1 shovel plow-----------------------------------------1.00
1 drawing knife & sundries------------------------- .25
1 kettle & bales---------------------------------------3.00
10 kettle & hooks------------------------------------ 2.00
1 sythe & cradle--------------------------------------2.50
1 old tea kettle---------------------------------------- .25
1 waffle iron------------------------------------------1.25
1 little skillet & lid----------------------------------- .50
1 ovin & hooks--------------------------------------- .75
1 ovin [sic] and lid [probably a Dutch oven]---- 2.00
1 smoothing iron------------------------------------- .50
1 Bible------------------------------------------------- .18
Some old tin ware------------------------------------ .37 ½
Shovel tongs and hand irons------------------------1.37 ½
1 set of hand irons------------------------------------1.00
9 chairs-------------------------------------------------2.50
1 cotton wheel-----------------------------------------1.00
1 check [?] reel----------------------------------------1.00
cupboard furnature [sic]------------------------------2.50
1 table--------------------------------------------------   .75
1 umbrella---------------------------------------------   .75
1 clock-------------------------------------------------15.00
1 old gray horse--------------------------------------- 1.00
1 Reep [?] Hook--------------------------------------   .37 ½
1 waggon [sic]---------------------------------------- 5.00
1 bed and furnature----------------------------------16.00
1 ash bedsted bed & bedding---------------------- 12.00
1 lot of books---------------------------------------- 2.00
1 candle stand--------------------------------------   1.25
1 lot of hogs------------------------------------------ 7.50
2 cows & calves-------------------------------------15.00
Total Amount-------------------------------------$141.68 ¾
One Note of hand on John Hughes                     50.00
And William Galloway for
Total------------------------------------------------$191.68 ¾

      John’s second wife Anna Maxwell Cowan had been born 11 December 1781, in Virginia, and died 9 January 1854, in Frankfort, Clinton County, Indiana. She was also buried in the Old Town Cemetery in Frankfort. Anna received a 160-acre land grant in the early 1850’s for her husband’s military services in the War of 1812. She was the daughter of Bezaleel Maxwell II [1751-1829] and Margaret Anderson [1755-1834]. Her grandfather, Bezaleel Maxwell I had emigrated from Scotland to Philadelphia then to Albemarle County, VA. Her father was born in Albemarle and died in Jefferson County, IN. Her brother John Maxwell was the father of her nephew Samuel Dunn Maxwell, who married Sally Cowan. Her brother Dr. David Hervey Maxwell, later of Bloomington, IN, was in the same military company as John Cowan and Isaiah Cooper in the War of 1812.
CHILDREN OF JOHN COWAN AND MARGARET WEIR

[1]   James Weir Cowan was born 30 June 1797. He was married to Isabel Hunter [21 January 1810-?] on 2 August 1831. He was living in Clinton County, Indiana, as late as 1851. Two of his known children were Samuel Walker Cowan, born 25 Sept. 1833, Company B Seventy-Second Indian Volunteers, U.S. Army during Civil War from 9 Aug. 1862 to 24 July 1865, married Mary Richards Sept 1865, died 4 February 1900, buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Crawfordsville, IN; and Margaret Ann Cowan, born 6 October 1835, married Issac N. Reath 18 Feb. 1857, died 3 June 1904. James obtained 160 acres of bounty land in the early 1850’s for his service in the War of 1812. He was in the same company as his father and Isaiah Cooper when he was just fifteen years old. He had a horse stolen, killed, or lost during the war on March 1, 1814. [See Maxwell History and Genealogy for more descendants.]

[2]   Mary Ann Cowan was born 18 April 1799 and died in August of 1819. She is not known to have married. She was no doubt the woman of the house after her mother’s death. It was probably because Mary Ann died that John Cowan decided to marry a second time, to Anna Maxwell, which he did four months after Mary Ann’s death.

[3]   Samuel Walker Cowan [“Walker”] was born 2 December 1801. He died 30 August 1834 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Nothing else is known about him at this time. His obituary, which gives the impression that he was not married, says:

     He was a vigilant and faithful public officer, an ardent friend to human nature; one who wept with, and soothed those who wept, and aided and lifted up those who were bowed down. Those who were allied to him by ties of blood have felt the parting pang, and while they have loved to remember that he was an honor to the name which he bore, they also remembered the presence of the Diety; their murmurings have been repressed. Oh! They know that God has taken one of his noblest works. C.

[4]   Esther Cowan 1803-1865. Because Esther is our direct ancestor, her biography is more lengthy and is placed elsewhere in this work.

[5]    Sarah “Sally” Tilford Cowan was born 30 October 1805, in Mercer County, Kentucky. She married Samuel Dunn Maxwell [19 Feb. 1803 – 3 July 1873], the nephew of her stepmother Anna Maxwell Cowan [1782-1854]. He was the son of John Maxwell [1775—1824] and Sarah Dunn [1780-1817] and grandson of Bezaleel Maxwell [1751-1824] and Margaret Anderson [1755-1834]. They married on 15 December 1822. Sally died 1 January 1856, in Pisgah, Kentucky. John Cowan died in his daughter Sally’s home in Frankfurt, Clinton County, Indiana. Samuel Maxwell was a lawyer and the justice of the peace in Frankfurt in 1851 and twice mayor of Indianapolis [1860-1864]. One of Sally’s children was Margaret Maxwell Allen. Sally’s narrative about her family was written by Margaret:

     My grandfather Cowan [Samuel Cowan] was killed by the Indians, and his wife [Ann Walker Cowan] taken prisoner at the same time, and was with them six years before she was rescued. Later, was taken the second time as was with them six months. They lived at the Fort at this time. The son [John Cowan] just escaped by fleetness of foot, and got inside the gate of the fort as the Indian’s tomahawk was uplifted to kill him.

     Sally had the following children: Sarah Jane Maxwell, 11 Sept. 1823-21 Oct. 1823; John Cowan Maxwell born 21 Nov. 1824, married Julia Ann Firestone 11 March 1851, died 12 January 1888; Irwin Maxwell, born 29 Sept. 1826-died 26 Nov. 1826; Margaret Ann Maxwell, born 23 Oct. 1827, married Rev. Dr. Robert Welch Allen 6 April 1846, died 15 April 1905, Los Angeles, CA; James Maxwell, born 13 March 1831-died 9 March 1832; Sarah Maxwell, born 30 April 1834, died 10 Oct. 1834; Martha Ellen Maxwell, born 27 Sept. 1837, married Lewis Jordan; Samuel Howard Maxwell, no information; Williamson Dunn Maxwell, born 11 May 1842-died 26 June 1873; David Maxwell, died 1845; Emma Turpin Maxwell, married first Elisha Brown, married second Mr. Lemist. [See Maxwell History and Genealogy for more descendants]

[6]     John Maxwell Cowan was the only child of the second marriage of John Cowan. His mother was Anna Maxwell. He was born in the new town of Indianapolis on 6 December 1821, being the first white child born in that town. John was born when his father was fifty-three years old and his mother, forty. He was his mother’s only child. In 1822 the family moved to a farm near Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, Indiana.
     When young John was ten, his father died, and hard times fell on the boy and his mother.
     He entered the preparatory school of Wabash College in 1836 and graduated in 1842 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Soon after his graduation he was appointed Deputy Clerk of Clinton County and moved to Frankfort, where his sister Sally and her husband Sam Maxwell lived. There he studied law in his spare time and was soon able to attend the University of Indiana Law School at Bloomington. Graduating after one year, he returned to Frankfort and began practicing law.
     On 13 November 1845 he married Harriet Doubleday Janney in Stockwell, Indiana, with whom he had four children. Harriet was born 29 July 1826 and died 28 June 1905, in Springfield, MO.
     In politics, John was a strong Whig and later a strong Republican after the rise of that new party. Like most Scotch-Irish of the time, he was Presbyterian. He was also a member of the Society of Colonial Wars. He was of medium height, slender build, and erect carriage.
     In 1858 he was elected judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit and reelected in 1864. In 1870, after finishing his second term on the bench, he moved his family to Crawfordsville, where he had grown up, forming a law partnership with Thomas M. Patterson, who would later become a United States Senator in Colorado. He afterward went into law practice with M. D. White and his second son, James P. E. Cowan. After three years he retired from practice and began working for the First National Bank of Crawfordsville as assistant cashier and legal advisor. He was for a number of years a trustee of Wabash College.
    In 1881 his wife became ill. A friend of John’s had moved to the Ozark Mountains near Springfield, MO, and recommended the climate as highly healthful. This influenced the Cowans to move to Springfield, Missouri, where he purchased a farm two miles south of town, where they farmed and raised stock. In 1889 the Cowans sold the farm and moved into a new home they had built on South Jefferson Street in Springfield. John was a pioneer in the development of Walnut Street as a business center.
    John purchased the Springfield Republican, which his two sons, James Cowan and William Cowan, ran.
     John lived to an advanced age, dying at the age of ninety-eight on 3 June 1920. He was buried in Crawfordsville, IN.
    The oldest child of John Maxwell Cowan and Harriet Janney was Edward H. Cowan. He was born 21 December 1846 and was still alive in 1915, living in Crawfordsville, IN. In the spring of 1864 he graduated from the Preparatory Department of Wabash College in Crawfordville, IN, and joined Company H of 135th Indiana Infantry and was discharged September 29, 1864. He reentered Wabash College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree and a M.D. in 1873 from Miami Medical College in Cincinnati, OH. He started a medical practice in Crawfordsville at that time and remained there for the rest of his life.   He married Lucy L. Ayars on 13 Nov. 1877. They had two childen: John Ayars Cowan [1880-1891] and Elizabeth L. Cowan, born 21 June 1884, who was a home economics teacher at Crawfordsville High School in 1915. This line probably died out.
     The second child of John Maxwell Cowan was James Porter Ellis Cowan, born 1848. He was a special pension examiner for the federal government in Washington, D.C.in 1915. On 30 January 1873 he married Louana Burnett. They had one child: Harriet Janney Cowan, born 12 Nov. 1873. She married Lewis T. Gilliland and lived in Portland, OR, in 1915. They had one child Maxwell Porter Gilliand born 15 August 1901. James married a second time, to Lalula R. Bennett on 31 Dec. 1883, and had Janet L. Cowan on 7 July 1885; Mary Bennett Cowan on July 20, 1888, and Anna J. Cowan. All three lived in Marietta, OH, while their father worked in Washington. In 1914 James and his family were living in Springfield, MO, where he was an editor of the Springfield Republican, of which his father was the owner.
    The third child of John Maxwell Cowan was his only daughter, Laura Ann Cowan, born 14 March 1851, in Frankfort, Clinton County, IN. Laura graduated from Glendale Female Academy in Ohio.She married Allen Trimble Blaine [1846-1880] on 16 Feb. 1876, a Civil War veteran, and was widowed at age twenty-nine. Laura was living in Springfield, MO, as late as 1920. She co-authored Maxwell History and Genealogy about 1915. She never remarried. Her only child from her four-year marriage was Mary Maxwell Blaine, born 3 October 1877. Mary graduated from Drury College with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1898. She obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1900. She married Rudyard S. Uzzell on 14 Feb. 1906. As of 1914 she had two sons: William Cowan Uzzell, born 14 January 1910; and Rudyard S. Uzzell, Jr., born 26 June 1912.
   The youngest of the four children of John Maxwell Cowan was his son John William Cowan, born 6 October 1853 in Frankfort, Clinton County, Indiana. John William never married. He was living in Springfield in 1915, running the Springfield Republican with his brother James.
[Sources: History of Clinton County, IN, pp.197-198; written in 1912, sent to me by the Clinton County Historical Society; U.S. Census Clinton County 1850 page 625; Beckwith’s History of Montgomery County Indiana pp. 160-161; Bowen’s History of Montgomery County, IN pp. 707-710; Beckwourth’s History of Montgomery County, IN, pp.160-161; The Cowans from County Down, by John K. Fleming, Derreth Printing Company, Raleigh, NC, 1971, pp.363-364; History of Greene County, MO, pp.992-995,1915; Death cert. of John M. Cowan, 1920; Maxwell History and Genealogy, by Florence Wilson Houston, Laura Cowan Blaine, and Ella Dunn Mellette, C. E. Pauley & Co., Indianapolis, IN, 1915; Baird’s History of Clark County, Indiana, pp.37-38; Will E. Parham Papers, McClung Collection, Knox County Library, 301 McGhee St., Knoxville, TN; Tennessee Cousins, by Worth S. Ray; ]
[John Cowan and Margaret Weir > Esther Cowan > John Shepherd Cooper > Rose Ella Cooper > Lois Belle Hodgson > Mildred Doreen Serrano > Donald L. Rivara > Rainie A. Rivara > Salman and Rehan Saeed]
Contributed by Don Rivara