Long, Owen M.

Born: 1809-XX-XX Frankfort, Kentucky

Died: 1882-10-23 Saint Louis, Missouri

Flourished: Beardstown, Illinois

Long trained as a physician and moved to Illinois. In 1835, he married Elizabeth F. Boss in Morgan County, Illinois. He served in the Black Hawk War as a surgeon, and then resumed the practice of medicine in Jacksonville, Illinois. In 1836 and 1837, he lived in Beardstown, Illinois, and he served as secretary of the Beardstown and Sangamon Canal. John J. Hardin offered Long a position as a surgeon in the Mexican War, but had to remain at home to care for his dangerously ill wife. In 1847, Long was one of the first trustees of the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane. In 1850, he lived in Jacksonville, Illinois, as a physician and owned $1,500 in real estate. Long received for his military service in the Black Hawk War 40 acres of bounty land in Christian County in 1853, and an additional 120 acres of bounty land in Mills County, IA, in 1859. In 1860, Long owned $7,000 in real estate and an additional $1,500 in personal property. In July 1861, Governor Richard Yates appointed him as surgeon with the 11th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and he served with the regiment from 1861 to 1864. He served as Acting Medical Director for the Department of Cairo, and in 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant placed him in charge of the Overton General Military Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Governor Richard Oglesby appointed him Military and Sanitary Agent for the State of Illinois for the Department of the Gulf, with headquarters in New Orleans, Louisiana. He returned to Illinois in 1867. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him in 1869 as U.S. consul at Panama, Colombia, where he served for eleven years.

Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Morgan County, 10 July 1835, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Morgan County, IL, 172; Land Patent of the United States to Owen M. Long, 15 April 1853, Warrant No. 17670, Christian County, IL, Land Patent of the United States to Owen M. Long, 1 April 1859, Warrant No. 29296, Mills County, IA, RG 49: Records of the Bureau of Land Management, Records of the General Land Office, Land Patents, 1789-2012, National Archives at Kansas City, Kansas City, MO; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Morgan County, IL, 67; Augustus C. Rogers, ed., United States Diplomatic and Consular Service: Our Representatives Abroad (New York: Atlantic Publishing Company, 1874), 308-12; Newton Bateman, Paul Selby, and Charles A Martin, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Cass County (Chicago: Munsell Publishing Company, 1915), 801; History of Morgan County, Illinois: Its Past and Present (Chicago: Donnelley, Loyd & Co., 1878), 408; Gravestone, Diamond Grove Cemetery, Jacksonville, IL.