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WHO WAS WHO in PLUM TOWNSHIP
Titusville Herald – Dec. 31, 1960
By H. W. Strawbridge

J.H. Cowan


John Henry Cowan was born near Wallaceville on April 25, 1854, second of six children of James and Catherine Richey Cowen. Young John was the only one of his father’s family who spelled his last name with an “A” in it instead of “E.” Some people called him “John,” others, “John Henry,” while his own family called him “Henry.” This writer has always heard him referred to as “John Henry” Cowan. He was reared on his father’s farm which was situated a good mile northeast of Wallaceville. He was educated in the old Fairview school which sat not too far away from the Cowen home. He and his brother, W.P. (Pick) Cowen, used to tell of some of the stunts they and other neighborhood lads pulled at Halloween times. Some of them were corkers. When John Henry was 21, he got exposed to scarlet fever from relatives, the DeWoody children. John and all his brothers and sisters took down with it. All recovered except the youngest, Clydie, 5, who died shortly after taking down with it. John Henry was grief-stricken over it. He and Clydie were very close. They slept together and Clydie thought his big brother just the person.
On June 24, 1877, John Henry was baptized with a class of ten persons in the Methodist faith by Rev. T.W. Douglas. The baptismal service was held at the creek just below the flouring mill at Wallaceville. The previous Sunday 19 had been baptized, and five more on July 1. A lady evangelist, Miss Maria Stratton, held a series of meetings in the Methodist Church there at that time. It was reported that nearly 100 persons professed conversion and a glorious work had been done. Crowds packed the large church for it. Many united with the church at the time. During the township elections of 1882 and 1883 John Henry served as a clerk on the election board. His was an appointive position. The only elective office he is known to have served was in 1894 when he was elected an auditor in the township.
A comical Plum news item appeared in a September, 1894, Franklin newspaper, and it will be repeated here exactly as then: “J.H. Cowan of Wallaceville informs us he has this season raised from one-half bushel of seed, 17 bushels and a peck of “Blue Whale” potatoes. This is a whale (a” Blue Whale” of course) of a report, and the nearest we can come to discounting it is by stating that neighbor Theuret raised a potato this season that he had to break into two pieces before he could lift it out of the hill. As a matter of dry detail, we may add that the potato was raised on new ground and had grown between a couple of roots.”
On a day in nearly June, 1885, John Henry took an unexpected dousing. It was reported as follows: “John H. Cowan undertook to wash his carriage in the creek at Wallaceville during the recent high water, but the current was so strong that it washed the carriage and John Both down the stream, until they were caught by a barbed wire fence. The carriage was badly demolished.”
He served in the Pennsylvania National Guards during the latter 1880’s and early 1890’s. Each August the guardsmen held encampments at some place in the state. In August, 1891, they were at New Kensington, along the Allegheny River. There were several fellows from John’s home area and some of them decided to go swimming on the evening of Aug. 8. The particular place was Arnold Station, sort of a suburb of New Kensington. Tragedy occurred when one, Edwin Clyde Richey, John Henry’s first cousin, drowned. His foot got caught in a snag underwater.
Four escorted the remains back to Wallaceville. They were John, Clyde’s brother, James W. Beers, Henry Cowan, Thomas Richey, Clyde’s nephew, and A.C. Miles, a neighbor. In this case sorrow came in “twos.” Clyde’s funeral was slated to be held at 10 a.m. the forenoon of Aug. 11, in the Sunville Presbyterian Church. People were gathering there when word arrived that his ailing consumptive sister, Miss Jessie V. Richey, had died at 9 a.m. So the hour of the service was changed while the undertaker made preparation and diggers made a double grave out of Clyde’s grave. At 5:30 that afternoon a double funeral was held for the brother and sister with a large attendance on hand. They were buried at sunset.
During the fall of 1892 the historic Homestead Strike occurred at Pittsburgh at which time the National Guards were called out for 92 days. John Henry was one who took part in that episode. On one particular day John was standing in a line of guard duty keeping back any would-be strikers who might want to go across. A certain man of foreign extraction became stubborn and decided he was going through where John was standing. John gave an ample warning to the man to stay back, but to no avail. John pierced the man’s leg with his bayonet and that stopped him. The late Albert Morse of Chapmanville, a guardsman the same period of time that John Henry served, recalled that one time at an encampment, John Henry put on a heavy coat, thinking it was his. It actually was Albert’s coat. Albert told him that he had on the wrong coat. John disagreed, saying it was his. Albert had inscribed his initials in it before-hand and told John to take it off and see for himself. John did so and discovered it was Albert’s coat and good naturedly turned it over to him. The only known instance of John Henry working in the oil fields was in 1900 when he was a tool dresser in the fields at Mungen, O. While there he wrote a letter dated Nov. 12 to his niece, Mrs. Kittie Carpenter Fox, who presently lives at Venus. Her mother was Mrs. Nellie Orra Carpenter, John’s sister. In the letter he stated a couple of interesting things: “I must tell you about two rides I have had this fall. One was a ride behind a bronco pony that weighs 265 pounds. The other was a ride on an automobile. The only thing I didn’t like about it, it only lasted ten minutes.” He was fortunate to experience an auto ride as early as the year 1900.
J. H. Cowan was of average height and weighed at least 200 pounds. He was stoutly built. He was a jolly, witty natured man and well liked by everybody. He could tell a story in such a flowery way that it was interesting to his listeners. Maybe someone else could tell the same story and it would prove dull or boring. John was a lover of children. Concerning witty remarks made by him, it is remembered that he once said in a conversation with others concerning the amount of work done in a season: “If you plan your work right in the spring, you won’t have much to do in the fall.” To those who may not get the point – if you don’t plant a crop in the spring, you won’t have to harvest it in the fall.
He had black hair in his younger years, but it turned white in his last years. He was good at mimicking other persons voices. Another thing he was good at was identifying tracks of persons. He might go out to the road and see someone’s tracks in the snow and though not seeing the person walking by, he would know who it was by studying it a bit. He was a good neighbor. When a neighbor girl, Miss Zula Seely, died of consumption on Jan. 31, 1898, the snow was quite deep. John Henry went over, took the Seely family’s horse, “Topsy”, and drove nearly 50 miles that day to help make funeral arrangements for the family. He drove to Cooperstown twice. Then, on the day of the funeral he went upstairs and carried Alice Seely (Clark), Zula’s sister, downstairs to see her dead sister. Mrs. Clark, who presently lives in Meadville, had typhoid at the time.
For nine years, approximately from 1902 until 1911, John Henry worked in Oil City as a streetcar conductor. He was good at this position, being a person who met the public favorably. It was during this period that he married Miss Lusetta Mary Guild, who was born east of Diamond on April 29, 1852, second daughter of Romanzo D. and Margaret Grove Guild. She and John were married at Corydon, which is in the extreme northeastern corner of Warren County, on Oct. 25, 1905, by a Rev. I.N. Williams. John was 51 and Lusetta was 53. Lusetta was a dressmaker and for some time during the 1880’s she was in that business at Jamestown, N.Y. She is remembered as having been very stylish. She was a Seventh Day Adventist. However, she attended the Second Advent Church at Wallaceville.

The couple first lived in the home of his sister, Miss Jennie Cowen, in Oil City while John Henry continued as a conductor.
After he quit that job they moved back to his farm near Wallaceville where Lusetta said, “We’re going to take it easy” to John’s niece Mrs. Nellie Cowen Weber, who presently lives in Titusville. Such was not the case. They worked harder. On his farm which he called “Sunny Slope Farm”, he kept cattle, horses, sheep and pigs. He used to haul hay to Oil City for perhaps ten or 12 dollars a ton. During his earlier years of raising horses his young niece, Mrs. Kittie Fox, delighted in riding them. The following appeared in the Fairview news of June 15, 1913: “A horse owned by the Kerr Hill Milling Company, that believes in the back-to-the-farm movement, is now rusticating on the farm of J.H. Cowan, and apparently enjoying the simple life.”
One of the last teams of horses that the Titusville Fire Department had, thought to be dapple grays, were sold to John Henry. One day he drove them to town and left them at the livery stable while he took care of his business. Afterwards he took them out of the stable and started to drive home. Just then the fire bell rang. It was either the Colonel Drake steamer or an automotive truck that started clanging to the fire. John Henry’s team took right after it and, though he tried desperately but vainly to turn them towards home, to the fire John Henry went on high! He told someone later that he never drove that team of horses into Titusville again.
An organization John Henry is known to have been a member is the Diamond Grange which he joined on Aug. 8, 1916.
During his last years of farming he occasionally hired neighbor boys, Lee and Harry Acel, to help him. Lee recalls that John once sent away for live “bacon hogs”, as they were called. They were exceptionally long pigs and they had mean dispositions. He kept this breed of hogs for two or three years. Harry recalls that when John would say “whoa” to his horses, one could hear him long way off because he would drawl out the word in a booming voice.
John Henry drove a Model T Ford touring car. One time he and Lusetta, Mr. and Mrs. J.O. Grove and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Hoover drove to the Stoneboro Fair. They went in their own cars. On the way home John had a flat tire in New Lebanon. He had quite a time getting it fixed, but finally did with the help of the other men.
On a Sunday morning in 1925 John Henry suffered a stroke. Mr. and Mrs. Heber Miles came over and did the chores for the Cowans that forenoon. John gradually recovered from it, but it left him with double vision. If he was looking at a person or an object, he would see two persons or two objects. He generally closed one eye to get a good focus on any certain object.
He sold his farm goods at a public sale on March 16, 1927, and on April 16 he and Lusetta moved in with his ailing sister, Jennie, at Oil city. Then for a short while they lived with his other sister, Nellie Orra, near Dempseytown. In April or May 1928, John Henry and Lusetta moved into the large Alcorn house located on Stone Springhouse Corners, a few miles west of Titusville. They rented this house from Mr. and Mrs. J.H. Kees who then owned it. Directly across the road was the Guild home where lived Lusetta’s sister, Mrs. Lina Guild.
On Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1928, the Cowans’ neighbor, Mr. Propheter, took them to Wallaceville to see John Henry’s brother, Pick, who was seriously ill with heart and kidney trouble. After they returned home John Henry told Lusetta that, “Pick’s never going to get out of there. I’m going back tomorrow and see him:.
The next morning, Thursday, John Henry got up, walked into the kitchen, then back into the bedroom where he slumped over the bed unconscious. Dr. Lowrey of Titusville was summoned and he announced that it was a cerebral hemorrhage and chances of recovery were poor.
Early Sunday morning, Sept. 9 at ten minutes after midnight, Pick Cowen died near Wallaceville, then at 7 o’clock the same morning John Henry died, aged 74. Thus the two brothers died the same morning – very unusual indeed.
Pick was buried on Tuesday at Wallaceville. John Henry was buried Wednesday from his Stone Springhouse Corners home with Rev. T.J. Smock, a former Advent minister of Wallaceville, officiating. Interment was in the Guild family lot in the Diamond Cemetery.
Lusetta then moved across the road with her sister, Lina. In early November, 1943, she fell and was seriously hurt. Pneumonia complications set in and she died in the Titusville Hospital on Nov. 21, at the age of 91.

Transcribed by Paula Harry
dharry@pa.rr.com

Disclaimer:there may be errors due to transcription of information from both early and late (current contributors) work.