McEowen donates to museum

0

GREENVILLE — Local genealogy buff Roger Lowell McEowen donated 27 binders and notebooks with family photos to Garst Museum this week.

These binders and notebooks focus on McEowen’s family history and genealogy from the arrival of his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Daniel McEowen and family from Scotland in 1736 and including present-day McEowen families in the United States.

He said he started on the family history and genealogy afer he retired from Corning Glass in 1996.

“I’ve been doing it off and on until the present,” he said. “The first four years, I spent a lot of time researching. I even wrote letters to Scotland. I called and got birth and death certificates. When you get into genealogy, you usually start with mom and dad, grandmothers and grandfathers.”

In his introduction he wrote, “I am very proud of my Scottish heritage and what it represents to me. More than 300 years of different blood lines probably put my blood line in the Heinz 57 variety.”

Also in his introduction, he outlines his direct line of McEowen ancestors and gives a brief history of each generation and its families.

A potpourri of 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centry ancestral names make up his mixed blood line.

Those names include, on the paternal side: Graham, Brokaw, Van Neste, Hageman, Potter, Millette, Bussard, Reigle, Black, Guitner and Ammerman; and on the maternal side: Black, Link, Slade, Roll, Hathaway Cusic, Shiverdecker, Ward, York, Taylor and Lyons.

McEowen said his original plan was to publish the necessary volumes required in hard cover book form of the family history and genealogy, but health problems in the form of cancer in 2001 put a damper on his plans and dream. He continued researching and writing at a slow pace between operations and treatments at the advent of cancer.

Thousands of hours and dollars were required in research and preparation to put all his family information together.

His final decision was to donate the family binders and notebooks to the Garst Museum for safe keeping where they will be available to anyone wanting to do McEowen family and collateral family research.

McEowen also donated the Guitner Family Genealogy, Ancestors of Roger L. McEowen book the York book and Hathaway Family Genealogy, the latter which he dedicated to his mother, to the museum.

Roger McEowen and Phyllis Krick, head of genealogy at Garst Museum, look over one of the 27 notebooks and binderws he donated to the museum this week.
https://www.dailyadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/web1_MCEOWN-AT-MUSEUM.jpgRoger McEowen and Phyllis Krick, head of genealogy at Garst Museum, look over one of the 27 notebooks and binderws he donated to the museum this week. Courtesy photo

No posts to display