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Cowan, John (1832-1908)
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History of Ritchie County
by Minnie Kendall Lowther
Wheeling News Litho. Co., Wheeling W.Va., 1911

Pages 588-589

John Cowan was prominent in the affairs of this town [town of
Petroleum] and community for a number of years and we here inscribe
his name:

He was born in Scotland on October 17, 1832, and spent his youthful
days among his native hills as a shepherd's boy; but in his early
manhood he enlisted in the British Army for service in the Crimean
war (1854-56) belonging to the Highland troops; and, like the other
members of this regiment, received a medal from the hand of Queen
Victoria, for bravery, which is inscribed with the names of the
four decisive battles of this war; viz., Alma, Balaklava,
Sebastopol, and Constantinople. He was an eye witness to the
"Charge of the Light Brigade" upon which Tennyson has based his
famous poem, and his brother, William, was one of the "six hundred"
that rode "Into the valley of death," and one of the very few that
escaped that awful fate.

Mr. Cowan lost the use of one of his ears owing to the bursting of
an ear-drum during the fierce canonading at Sebastopol. He was
distantly connected to Thomas Carlyle, the great English historian
and essayist, and remembered his visits to the Carlyle home with
his parents in his childhood.

He came to America during the autumn of 1857, and spent the winter
in New York, but, owing to the severity of the climate, went to New
Orleans during the following spring and summer. There he met and
married Miss Janett Muir, a Scotch maiden, on January 3, 1862; and
together they came to Petroleum in 1872, where he figured as
justice of the peace for thirteen years, and as a good citizen for
the rest of his days. He had been a communicant of the Free Church
of Scotland in his native land, but united with the Presbyterian
church after coming to this county. He removed from Petroleum to a
farm four miles distant, but owing to a paralytic stroke which
disabled him, he returned to the town where Death closed his eyes
on May 30, 1908, and in the Egypt cemetery, near Cairo, he lies
buried. Mrs. Cowan with their eight children still survives.

The sons and daughters are as follows:

Mrs, Jessie (R. G.) Powell, Miss Agnes Cowan, and John H., are of
Petroleum: Mrs. G. W. Foutty, of Freeport; Miss Marian, of Cairo;
Robert L., of Wheeling; William N., and James of Sherrard, near
Wheeling.

This family of Cowan's do not belong to the same race as the other
family of this name that has a place in this work.

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