OWNBEY, RUBY ALVIRA - Hutchinson County, Texas | RUBY ALVIRA OWNBEY - Texas Gravestone Photos

Ruby Alvira OWNBEY

Holt Cemetery
Hutchinson County,
Texas

May 12, 1882-May 4, 1917

Wife of Joseph M Ownbey
Gone but not forgotten


*Photo/information courtesy of Edith Guynes Stanley

Joe (Joseph Monroe) Ownbey came to Hutchinson County, Texas, in the year 1900, and he made his home in this county until his death in 1950, except for parts of some of his later years which were spent in Moffat County, Colorado.

Joe Ownbey was born September 11, 1875, in Erath County, Texas. His parents, James Bly Ownbey, Sr., and Nancy Caroline (Quarles) Ownbey, natives of Georgia and North Carolina, respectively, had migrated there immediately after the Civil war. We, the writers of this chronicle, feel that it is noteworthy for our purpose here to state that these parents of Joe Ownbey, together with his younger brother, Jim (James Bly, Jr.) Ownbey; his older brother, John, and his wife, Belle Ownbey; and his older sister, Sallie, with her then husband, Matt Johnson, moved to Hutchinson County and became landowners, farmers and ranchers there in the early 1900's only a few years after Joe Ownbey settled in that county. From that time, Sallie Ownbey Johnson, who after the death of Matt Johnson became the wife of James E. Pritchard, also an early day resident and landowner of the county, and John and Belle Ownbey lived and farmed and ranched in this county without interruption until their various death in the 1940's and 1950's. Jim Ownbey and his wife, Abbye, although retaining their farming and ranching interests there, moved to the neighboring town of Canadian, Texas, upon his retirement.

Joe Ownbey left the home of his parents at an early age to begin earning his own living as a "cowpoke" for other ranchers. It was while working as such on a large ranch in the then Oklahoma Territory, near Woodward, that Joe Ownbey met and later married Ruby Alvira Pollock, school teacher and daughter of a pioneer Oklahoma rancher. As Joe's bride, she was brought to the headquarters of the Turkey Track ranch, located near the scene of the famous Adobe Walls battlegrounds in Hutchinson County, Texas. This ranch, which was later acquired by Mr. and Mrs. W.T. (Tom) Coble, was then owned to Patton and Price, a land and cattle company of Kansas City, Missouri, and Joe Ownbey had been its manager since he came to the county in 1900.

In 1912, Joe and Ruby Ownbey decided to "strike out" for themselves and so bought a small "spread" adjacent to the Turkey Track ranch. Then, just before World War I, this was sold to Jim Ownbey, younger brother of Joe. Joe and Ruby bought land in the Holt Community of Hutchinson County, Texas, where their struggles, hard times and good times were more or less typical of those of other pioneer farmers and ranchers in this sparsely settled country at that time. In the beginning, of course, their communication and transportation facilities were quite limited. However, in 1913 Joe Ownbey purchased his first automobile, and it is believed that this community obtained country, party-line telephones about or shortly after that time.

Although Joe Ownbey was elected sheriff and tax collector of Hutchinson County in 1922, he did not leave his farm home in the Holt Community, buy a home and move to the then county seat of Plemons, Texas, until the summer of 1924. In the meantime, when his duties of his office required his presence in town, he stayed with his parents who then lived there and cared for his two youngest daughters, Elise and La Verne, during school terms; since Ruby, Joe Ownbey's wife, had died in 1917. At other times, Joe's office was presided over and the necessary clerical duties were performed by his friend and deputy, Hardy W. Pitts.

Joe Ownbey served in this office until 1930, so it was while he was in office that oil was discovered in the county, and as a result the population of the county during a period of a little more than a year increased from about 800 persons to an estimated 40,000 of such, it was Joe Ownbey and his deputies who, acting upon the orders of the County Commissioners, moved the county records from the court house in Plemons to a temporary building in the new town of Stinnett, Texas, which in a recent election had been voted county seat.

By several supposedly knowledgeable persons, it has been stated and written that during his term of office as sheriff of Hutchinson County, Joe Ownbey handled competently and in an unusually admirable and praiseworthy manner some of the most notorious and dangerous criminals in the Southwest at that time, who had been drawn to the area because of this rather famous oil boom, with its resultant big and plentiful money.

Joe and Ruby Ownbey were the parents of four children. Lois, their oldest daughter, was at one time one of the teachers in what was then the two-teacher school at Plemons, Texas.

Incidentally, it was not until the school term of 1928-1929, a few years after the county seat had been moved away, that the Plemons School District acquired the necessary and required facilities to make it a state affiliated and accredited four-year high school.

That year Elise, the third child of Joe Ownbey, at age 16, was one of the seven graduates of that high school, in which she had been a pupil since she first started to school. Elise Ownbey became the wife of June Lewis, who was one of the pioneers of Borger, Texas, coming there in late 1926, and later moving to Stinnett.

"Bud" (James Samuel), the only son of Joe Ownbey, died in 1926, at age 17.

La Verne, the youngest daughter of Joe Ownbey, became the wife of Ferrill Early, son of J.E. and Myrtle Early, who were among the first residents of Stinnett, Texas. La Verne and Ferrill Early lived in Stinnett from the time of their marriage in 1943 until Ferrill's death in 1972, after which La Verne continued to live there until moving to Dallas, Texas, in 1975.

Lois Ownbey now lives in Amarillo, Texas, as do Elise and June Lewis, who moved there after many years of living in Borger, Texas. All three of these daughters of Joe Ownbey are still property owners in Hutchinson County and are frequent visitors thereto.

(Complied by Elise Ownbey Lewis and La Verne Ownbey Early for inclusion in the 'History of Hutchinson County 104 Years 1876-1980' which was published in 1980 by the Hutchinson County Historical Commission)

Contributed on 11/22/20 by neldapat
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Record #: 367633

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Submitted: 11/22/20 • Approved: 11/22/20 • Last Updated: 11/25/20 • R367633-G367633-S3

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