Tenants of the Owen Block - Short Term

Renovations continue at the Owen Block

Photographed 25 April 2015

Some folks who moved to the Owen Block after it was constructed in 1882  did not stay long. It appears that many stayed for a year or so and then moved elsewhere.  Below are three families who were short term residents at the Owen Block.

Fred Jones, manager of Blemker Stone Company of Evansville, moved to the Owen Block in May 1883 and still lived there in December 1884. By July 1885, Mr. and Mrs. Jones had moved to Golconda, Illinois[1], staying there but a short time before moving to Dallas. It was reported in an Evansville newspaper that Jones, manager of Avery Branch Plow House of Dallas, had passed through Evansville. "He reports his boy, who was born here and named after Dr. Owen, as being proud of his Hoosier birth."[2]

"William L. Heysinger, local manager of the Monarch Sleeping Car Company, was married on the 17th inst. at Columbia, S.C. to Miss Mary L. McAlister. He held high position in Mr. Lincoln's administration."[3] A month later the newspaper reported the newlyweds had taken a suite of rooms at 123 Chestnut Street in the Owen Block.[4] The next year the couple had moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he continued as an agent for the Monarch Parlor Sleeping Car Company.[5]

Ethelbert T. Kemper was 20 years old when he was enumerated on the 1880 Garrard County, Kentucky census[6] in the household of Andrew Kemper.  E.T. Kemper married Annie Van Pelt by 1890. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper, along with their children John and Laura, moved to Evansville before 1900. That year they were enumerated on the Vanderburgh County census at 127 Chestnut Street, Owen Block.[7]  The Kemper family moved on to Indianapolis by 1910. Annie Kemper died in 12 February 1919 in Fayette County, Kentucky[8] and her husband, Ethelbert T. Kemper, died  1944 in Elmhurst, DuPage County, Illinois. [9] Both are buried in Lexington, Kentucky.

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[1] "Personal," Evansville Courier, 2 July 1885, p. 4.

[2] "Personal," Evansville Daily Journal, 14 May 1887, p. 9.

[3] "Street Talk," Evansville Daily Courier, 19 November 1886, p. 4.

[4] "Personal," Evansville Journal, 12 December 1886, p. 5.

[5] 1887 Jacksonville, Florida City Directory, p. 127.

[6] 1880 Garrard County, Kentucky census, E.D. 44, p. 543D.

[7] 1900 Vanderburgh County, Indiana census, Pigeon Township, E.D. 0088, p. 9A.

[8] Kentucky Death Certificate #5534, Annie VanPelt Kemper, age 56, parents William VanPelt and Deborah Warner, Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2015.

[9] Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths 1916-1947, Ethelbert T. Kemper, born 23 September 1860 and died 26 June 1944. His parents were listed as Andrew Kemper and Martha Lawless.

Published 1 May 2015, Rambling Thoughts ... Out Of My Mind, Brenda Joyce Jerome, C.G.