George Washington Owen

Attorney, planter, and politician George Washington Owen (1796-1837) served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Alabama’s Third Congressional District for three terms, from 1823 to 1829, and as the tenth mayor of Mobile, Mobile County, from 1836 until his death the following year. 

Owen was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, on October 20, 1796, to Richard Brown Owen and Susanna Louisa Edwards Owen. He was the second eldest of nine children. The family later moved to Tennessee while Owen was a young child. He attended the local common (public) schools before studying law under future U.S. Attorney General Felix Grundy and graduating from Cumberland College (present-day University of Nashville) in Nashville, Tennessee. Admitted to the bar in 1816, Owen then relocated to Claiborne, Monroe County, to practice law, forming a partnership with future Alabama governor, John Gayle. At age 23, Owen married Louisa Sarah Hollinger in Baldwin County on June 21, 1820. The couple had ten children.

Owen developed an interest in politics, serving a term in the Alabama State House of Representatives from 1819 to 1821, representing Monroe County in the state’s newly formed legislature. The session was held in Cahaba (Cahawba), Dallas County. He also served as the Speaker of the House from 1820 to 1821 and was succeeded by James Dellet in that role. That same year, Owen unsuccessfully ran for a Congressional House seat. In the Cahawba Press and Alabama Intelligencer, he outlined some of his campaign stances, noting the importance of defending the Port of Mobile from potential invasion and protecting the interests of Alabamian settlers in the wake of the Panic of 1819.

In 1823, he was elected to represent the newly created Third Congressional District as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party for the Eighteenth Congress. Created on March 4, 1823, the district consisted of Autauga, Baldwin, Butler, Clarke, Conecuh, Covington, Dallas, Henry, Mobile, Montgomery, Monroe, Pike, Washington, and Wilcox Counties. One of his opponents was Arthur P. Bagby, a state legislator and future governor, from (1837-41). Owen won two more terms, serving until 1829. Throughout Owen’s three congressional terms, Gabriel Moore represented Alabama’s First District and John McKee the Second.

Amidst the 1824 U.S. presidential election during Owen’s first term, all four candidates on the ballot identified as Democratic-Republicans. No candidate won a majority of electoral votes, so the election was decided by Congress, with each state delegation having one vote. In February 1825, Alabama cast its ballot for Andrew Jackson, but John Quincy Adams received the majority vote and was elected president. Although Owen had initially supported William Crawford, he later joined the Jacksonian faction, which espoused an anti-elitist vision of democracy favoring universal White male suffrage and states’ rights.

In his first term, he served on a select committee for the Cumberland Road (later called the National Road), a key nineteenth century federally funded thoroughfare that initially ran from Virginia to Ohio and was eventually extended to Vandalia, Illinois. In his second term, Owen served on the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee of Claims, from which he presented land claim petitions for Alabamians and resolutions from Alabama to gain rights to the three million acres of Creek land acquired through the 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs. During Owen’s second term, the second Treaty of Washington (1826) replaced the Treaty of Indian Springs, which was deemed fraudulent. Under terms of the new treaty, Muscogee, or Creek, Indians, retained their land in Alabama but had to cede land in Georgia. Alabama officials responded by applying state law over Creek territory, adding to tensions that led to removal and the Second Creek War.

He served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs in his third term. As a representative for a young state, during his three terms he advocated for its infrastructure, including improving navigation in Mobile Bay and defenses on Dauphin Island and adding postal routes. He also petitioned for the purchase of public land on which the city of Mobile could build a refuge from disease and pestilence that plagued the area.  

Owen voted against the controversial protective tariffs in 1824 and 1828. Key goals of the tariff were to support domestic manufacturing and generate federal revenue by raising the cost of imported goods. Both tariff bills ultimately passed. Southerners, including Owen, generally opposed the tariffs because the South relied upon European imports. The Tariff of 1828 in particular was opposed in the South and in Alabama, where local groups organized against the tariff and in favor of state rights. Indeed, South Carolina threatened to “nullify” the 1828 tariffs and later nullified the 1832 tariffs, both on the basis of states’ rights, presaging the sectional crisis that culminated in the Civil War. In 1832, Owen, after his career in Congress had ended, was elected vice president of one such political committee in Mobile. The group staunchly opposed the tariffs, but also condemned the doctrine of nullification, which the group said would threaten the national government and risk civil war.

Owen did not run for reelection after his third term; Dixon Hall Lewis succeeded him in the House of Representatives in 1829. Pres. Andrew Jackson appointed Owen Collector of the Port of Mobile, overseeing the collection of customs duties, a position he held from April 1828 until July 1836. Alabama newspapers affectionately but incorrectly referred to him as “Col. Owen” because of that role. In 1836, Owen was elected mayor of Mobile and served until his death. He also served briefly as a director of the Bank of Mobile. One source refers to Owen as a planter; the 1830 Census states that he owned 43 enslaved individuals.

Owen died on August 18, 1837, at his plantation home near Mobile and is buried in Church Street Cemetery in Mobile. His wife Louisa is also buried in Church Street Cemetery.