Source: Nevada Confederate Veterans
Surgeon, Confederate Army, unit unknown
Joseph Richardson Nimmo Owen was a native of Tuscalousa County, Alabama born on March 1, 1818. He studied science for two years at the University of Alabama in 1831. He served as a volunteer in an Alabama regiment during the Seminole War in Florida. In 1836, he enrolled at Transylvania University and subsequently became a hospital orderly serving an eight year apprenticeship at various Southern medical facilities. Joseph in 1846, served as a Hospital Steward during the Mexican War until mustered out in 1847. He settled in Butte County, California in 1850, and was engaged as a placer miner and land speculator. He opened his own medical practice in Oroville in 1860. In 1861/62, he settled in Virginia City, Nevada becoming a stockholder in the Birdsall Gold and Silver Mining Company. He also started a medical practice. He left Nevada in 1864 to serve as a surgeon in the Confederate Army. Joseph moved to Hamilton, Nevada in 1869 and was a physician. In 1870, he was acquitted in the killing of attorney Richard N. Allen on the grounds of justifiable homicide. Joseph moved to Eureka in 1876, and served as the Eureka County physician. In 1887/88, he invented and patented a pneumatic cannon. He died May 3, 1900, in Eureka at the age of 82. (Staff, 1995, April 29, p.___ )
