Sam Owen
De Smet boot and shoe maker, and avid horseman.
SHOE STORE. S.B. OWEN. Keeps the only exclusive boot and shoe store in the city. He has a first-class stock of goods and has enlarged his building to accommodate his stock. He also has a repair shop in connection with his store. – Kingsbury County Independent, December 22, 1892.
The Owen family members mentioned in the Little House books include Sam Owen (the man who races his bay horses against Almanzo Wilder in the 4th of July race in Little Town on the Prairie; his house is mentioned in The Long Winter) and V.S.L. Owen, Laura’s teacher in Pioneer Girl, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years. Sam Owen was Ven Owen’s father; Sam was also the father of Ada Owen (she married Willard Seelye), Frances Owen (who married Daniel Dwight), Newt Owen (who was in business in De Smet for a while with his father), Sarah, Sam, Jr., and Mabel. Sam and his wife Sarah were the grandparents of Clarence Dwight, one of Laura’s students in the Wilkin School.
Sam Owen was the first cousin of De Smet attorney, John Augustus Owen, who signed Laura Ingalls’ contract to teach Perry School as director of De Smet township schools. Attorney Owen was master of ceremonies at the dedication of the De Smet graded school in January 1885. After his wife Maria died in 1888, John Owen moved to California.
Samuel Burdette Owen, Sr. was born in Homer, New York on January 1, 1828. On December 5, 1847, he married Sarah Ann Hoyt in Ithaca, New York, where they lived for about a year before moving to Racine, Wisconsin. In 1871, the Owens moved to Kasson (Dodge County) Minnesota, where Sam first ran a general store and boot shop; in 1873, he closed out his stock of groceries and notions to open an exclusive boot and shoe store and shoe repair shop on Main Street opposite the Kasson depot. In 1874, he was elected Constable.
Little House characters who moved to De Smet from Kasson in 1880 included Samuel Owen, Thomas Power, and Edward Couse, who promoted Kingsbury County and acted as land agent in hopes to form a Dodge County “colony” in Kingsbury. Another Kingsbury settler from Dodge County was John Hunt, the man Laura Ingalls Wilder called Mr. Hunter in By the Shores of Silver Lake, who was murdered by a claim jumper.
July 25, 1879, Sam Owen filed on a tree claim in Kingsbury County, the NE 20-111-56, a half mile west of Almanzo Wilder’s homestead. In the summer of 1880, Sam Owen sold his Kasson property and headed west. August 17, 1880, he filed on a homestead in Kingsbury County, the NW 20-111-56, the quarter section lying just west of his tree claim. He purchased two lots on Calumet, Lots 12 & 13, Block 3, building a house on Lot 13, the front room of which housed his boot and shoe shop, according to his descendants. In The Long Winter, (see Chapter 8, “Settled in Town”), Charles Ingalls recounts for his family who was spending the Hard Winter in town. Pa says that there are 14 business buildings, the depot, and “Sherwood’s and Garland’s and Owen’s” houses, not counting three or four shacks on back streets. Note that Sam Owen’s building is considered a dwelling house, not a business house by Pa. On the map Laura drew for Rose when they were working on the Hard Winter manuscript, she doesn’t include the Owen house, instead showing three vacant lots north of Ruth’s bank (she also has Loftus Store in the wrong spot); click HERE to see a drawing showing lot owners during the LH years.
The Owen house was built with three rooms below and an upstairs over just the front room overlooking Calumet. Sam Owen added on to the north side of his house after the Hard Winter, and this smaller, one-story connecting addition was what the Ingallses and other town residents knew as his boot and shoe shop. The 1884 bird’s-eye drawing shows the house but not the shoe shop addition; click HERE to view the labeled drawing. According to the 1900 census, Sam and Sarah Owen, Francis Dwight and son Clarence, and Willard Seelye and wife Ada and son Owen were all living in the Sam Owen house at the time.
In the photo above, the Sam Owen property is circled; a large wooden boot shape hung over the door of his shop, and a shop bell announced the arrival of a customer. The photo doesn’t show all of the 14 lots facing Calumet on Block 3; the brick building at left is on Lot 13, one of the two lots originally purchased by Sam Owen. In late 1881, Samuel and Sarah Owen sold this lot to James J. Shockley, early De Smet blacksmith. The Shockley home stood here until it was moved to a lot on Fourth Street to make way for the 1892 two-story brick building shown; this brick building was first occupied by Andrews & Chenoweth’s clothing store downstairs and the law offices of Charles Whiting & James T. Cooley upstairs.
When the Owens moved to Dakota Territory, Sam was 52 years old and wife Sarah was 59. Of their seven children, the only child still living at home was son Newt, 18 years old and no longer in school. Ven Owen had married Sophia Hilton in September 1880 and Sophia remained in Adrian, Minnesota, while Ven worked on his claim in northeast Kingsbury County and at Oakwood, in Brookings County. They were reunited after Ven was hired to teach the De Smet town school in September 1883. Newt moved to Missouri in 1886; he had been running a livery business in partnership with his father, which he sold to Cap Garland and Walter Kermott. In January 1887, Sam decided to give up his boot and shoe business, selling out to E. A. Crane, who operated out of a different building on Calumet. When Crane died a few years later, Sam Owen bought the “kit and stock” from the estate, and he reopened his old business at the old stand.
Both Sam Owen and his son Newt were skilled horsemen, and local newspapers reported their participation in numerous trotting races at the trotting track on Fred Dow’s tree claim east of De Smet. Sam also bought and sold race horses and stallions. The Owens were active members of the De Smet Driving Park organized in 1884; their race track was east of Eliza Jane Wilder’s homestead, the tracks created to help curb the tendency of young men to race their horses through town. In May 1902, Sam Owen was elected to the board of directors of the Driving Park, along with Edward Couse, William Ruth, John Armstrong, and others. Like Charles Ingalls, Sam Dwight was a Mason and a Justice of the Peace in De Smet Township. The Owen family were active members in the Methodist Church in De Smet.
In October 1902, the Owens sold their property on Calumet, and the shoe business was taken over by Joseph Friedbauer of Carthage. Sam and Sarah went to live with their daughter, Sarah (Mrs. Frank Pond), in Brookings. Sarah Owen died there on March 20, 1904, at age 83; she was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brookings.
Sam Owen, now 76 years old, moved to Mankato, Minnesota, to help look after his ailing daughter, Ada (Mrs. Willard Seelye), who died in Mankato in 1905 and was brought to De Smet for burial. Sam lived with son Ven in Minnesota for over a year, then he moved to Brookings to live once again with daughter Sarah Pond. Sam spent his 80th birthday in De Smet with his daughter, Frances Dwight (Mrs. Dan Dwight), his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
On August 11, 1909, Sam Owen died at age 81 in Brookings; he was buried beside his wife in Greenwood Cemetery. The Kingsbury County Independent wrote: “Sam” Owen, as he was best known in this city, was one of the early residents of De Smet, and this city was his home until the death of Mrs. Owen a few years ago… Sam Owen was an honorable and upright citizen and during his twenty years or more of his residence in De Smet made a host of friends who sincerely mourn his death, and who extend their deepest sympathy to the bereaved sons and daughters.”
In the late 1930s, two of Sam and Sarah’s great-great-grandchildren lived in the house built by Sam Owen on Calumet. It had remained a shoe shop for many years, then the shoe shop became a cream station. It was purchased in 1935 to be operated as a residence and gift shop. By the 1960s, the south building housed an insurance agency with the former shoe shop a barber shop. Although there have been numerous changes to the façade of the original residence/shop over the decades, the adjoining buildings that Sam Owen constructed in 1880 and after the Hard Winter are still standing to this day and house Bernie’s Barber Shop (219-½ Calumet Avenue, S.E., De Smet). Look for the step-down false front reminiscent of the original house and shop!
Sam Owen (LTP 8, 23, PG)
Owen’s house (TLW 8)
Owen’s bay horses (LTP 8)
De Smet Cemetery tour info for OWEN (Samuel and Sarah Owen obituaries are included, and there is a relationship chart of the Owen family)