Document. Burning of the Old Cowan House

Watchers
Share

Tapestry

Contents


Return to Old Chester Tapestry|Explanation
Cowan Tapestry
Register
Data
Notebooks
Analysis
Bibliography
Graphics
YDNA
Cowan Links
Index


……………………..The Tapestry
Families Old Chester OldAugusta Germanna
New River SWVP Cumberland Carolina Cradle
The Smokies Old Kentucky

Source

Original Source: Article in the Chambersburg Paper, author not stated, dated July 7, 1879. Typed by Orlan Cowan July 26, 1996.
Intermediate Source: Files of Chris Cowan, February, 2010.

Related

person:Samuel Cowan (17)
Image:Samuel Cowan, C33-49.jpg
Cowan's Gap Cowans
Source:Maurer, 1899

Text

Samuel Cowan at Cowan's Gap. Click for detail.
Enlarge
Samuel Cowan at Cowan's Gap. Click for detail.
The Old Cowan House

The burning of the Old Cowan House on Wednesday evening last week, has removed an old land-mark and also created some little discussion as to the real age of the old building.We give a brief history of the house and of the family by whom it was built, as we heard it some years ago, when Grandmother Cowan was still living but very aged and feeble[1]


In the year 1859, some gentlemen in New York City, who had in their minds the building of a railroad route to Pittsburgh and the West through Southern Pennsylvania, but were unacquainted with the topography of that portion of Franklin County which lies between the Tuscarora and Kittatinny mountains, wrote to a prominent citizen of our town, asking him to take a friend or two and make a trip to a place called Cowan's Gap, and report the possibility of its being a suitable place for a railroad crossing.

After caring for their horses and partaking of lunch, one of the party who had been prospecting came back and asked the others to come into a house and see a very old woman[2] Upon entering the building they found in a bed in a corner of a room, a woman apparently in the last stages of some disease. After expressing surprise at finding her in such a lonesome place, and in such a feeble condition, they asked her about her early history, when she told them the following story:

"During the Revolutionary War my father was a merchant in Boston. While it was occupied by the British, I made acquaintance of a soldier by the name of Edgar Cowan,[3]Our acquaintance ripened into love, but my father, who was strongly opposed to anything that savored of the British, objected to our marriage. After my lover was discharged from the army, I married him, not withstanding the opposition of my father.

We left Boston and came to Pennsylvania and located in what is now called Culbertson Row, in this county. We lived there for two years, but my husband who had heard so much of the celebrated "blue grass" regions of Kentucky, became dissatisfied, and we finally packed our household traps into two wagons and headed for Kentucky.

The first day we reached a small town called Campbellstown. The second day, while passing through what is now London, our wagon broke down. There was no blacksmith shop nearer than Cambellstown and the condition of the wagon rendered it impossible to take it to that place. While we were lamenting our misfortune and wondering what we should do, an Indian chief of the Tuscarora tribe, who after discovering the condition of our affairs proposed to exchange a tract of land up in the mountains for our horses and wagons, agreeing to assist us in getting our household goods to the spot. He brought us to this place. We built a cabin, cleared some ground for cultivating, and settled down. In a couple of years we built this house and moved into it, and here I am yet. I am now one hundred and four years old[4]."

Our young antiquarian friends can now amuse themselves in calculating the age of the old house. The story reads like a romance, but it was told to us several years ago by the only one of the party of four gentlemen still living. He is now in his eightieth year and hale and hearty. If he should happen to read this history, taken from memory, and should in it find any inaccuracies: we will be obliged to him if he will correct them.

Footnotes

  1. This seems to indicate that the anonymous author of this article heard the story shortly after it occurred (i.e., c1860). "Grandmother Cowan" is listed in the household in 1860 as age 102. She is not listed in the household in 1870. We can guess that she died soon after the 1860 census taker visited; if she lived longer than that she was extraordinarily long lived, or not quite as old as reported in the 1860 census, or in her own account.
  2. It is significant that in this earliest version of the story the woman's name is not given. Later genealogists will identify her as "Mary Cowan".
  3. [[Source:Maurer, 1899|Maurer, as quoted by Source:Fleming, 1971]] repeats this story, but makes a critical change, giving the husbands name as "John" not "Edgar".
  4. Again, later genealogists will give her age as 102.