Owens, Nathaniel

Born: 1766

Died: 1846 Kentucky

Owens was an early settler of Green County, Kentucky, where he was the first sheriff, a justice of the peace, and a county judge. He was an owner of enslaved people; in 1840, he owned twenty-four enslaved persons, several of which were engaged in agriculture. In 1814, his wife Nancy died from influenza, and the following spring he married Mary Ann Yates. He was a wealthy man who sent his children, including Elizabeth Abell and Mary S. Owens, to established boarding schools; and he ran a school of his own, Brush Creek Academy.

William B. Allen, A History of Kentucky (Louisville, KY: Bradley & Gilbert, 1872), 383-84; Dale Thomas, Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County, Illinois (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012), 57-59, 104-6; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Green County, KY, 190.