George Owens
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After the War Department issued General Order 329 in October 1863, African Americans had the opportunity to fight in the Union Army. George Owens, born enslaved in 1843 in Kentucky, took this opportunity. Owens enlisted in the Union Army on June 28, 1864, most likely after his owner freed him. From 1864 to 1866, George Owens served in Company F of the 116th Colored Infantry. In 1865, the 116th participated in the Appomattox Campaign, a series of battles that led to the defeat of the Confederacy. When the Civil War ended, Congress authorized the creation of the 9th Cavalry, one of the new African American regiments. On October 7, 1866, Owens left the 116th and joined the 9th Cavalry. These men, called Buffalo Soldiers by Plains Native Americans, served in west and southwest Texas. Owens and his fellow soldiers served during the Indian Wars (1866-1891), major frontier campaigns against Native Americans used to continue westward expansion. These campaigns, however, contributed to the harmful, violent process of Native American removal in the 19th century. Soon after Owens joined, Troop F of the 9th Cavalry was sent to Fort Davis. While serving, the 9th rebuilt forts and protected stagecoaches, railroad crews and trains, and surveying parties from hostile forces. Many soldiers in the 9th Cavalry received the Medal of Honor, making it the most honored African American unit. Owens was discharged from the 9th Cavalry in the early 1870s. After his service, he settled in Corpus Christi and died soon after on June 4, 1879. Along with approximately 180,000 other African Americans, George Owens served in the Union Army and fought for his and other enslaved people's freedom. Additionally, his service in the 9th Cavalry highlights African Americans' historical significance in United States military history. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.
Why it matters
His life traces the arc of Black military service from emancipation through the frontier army, embodying both the fight for freedom and the era's contested westward expansion.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
George Owens was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, in a border state where bondage and the coming storm of civil war were tightly wound together. When the Civil War came, it slowly opened a door that had long been shut: the chance for African Americans to fight in the Union Army. A War Department order in the autumn of 1863 formally cleared the way for Black men to enlist, and tens of thousands seized it.
His enlistment in 1864 placed him among the United States Colored Troops during the war's climactic final year. These were men who had everything at stake — many, like Owens, had been enslaved — and who fought not only for the Union but for the freedom of themselves and others still held in bondage.
After the war, the setting of his life shifted from the battlefields of the East to the vast, contested frontier of West Texas. This was the era of rapid westward expansion, when the federal government pushed to secure trails, railroads, and settlement across lands where Native nations still lived and resisted. The Army that Owens joined would be at the center of that violent, complicated chapter.
People & events
Owens enlisted in the summer of 1864, most likely after gaining his freedom, and served in a company of the 116th United States Colored Infantry. In 1865 his regiment took part in the Appomattox Campaign — the series of movements and battles in Virginia that brought the Confederacy to its final surrender. A man born enslaved thus helped bring about the war that ended slavery.
When the war closed, Congress authorized new African American regiments in the peacetime Army, among them the 9th Cavalry. Owens left the infantry in the autumn of 1866 to join this cavalry, becoming one of the soldiers whom Plains Native peoples came to call Buffalo Soldiers. His troop was sent to the far West Texas post of Fort Davis, out in the mountains and desert of the frontier.
There the work was hard and constant: rebuilding forts, and guarding stagecoaches, railroad crews, trains, and surveying parties. His regiment served through the long Indian Wars and became the most honored African American unit of its kind, with many of its soldiers receiving the Medal of Honor. Owens was discharged in the early 1870s, settled in Corpus Christi, and died there in 1879, only a few years after leaving the Army.
Its place in the American story
One man's service can hold two of the largest and most difficult themes in American history at once. George Owens fought for freedom in the Civil War as one of roughly 180,000 African Americans who served in the Union Army — a force whose participation helped decide the war and gave powerful moral weight to emancipation. His presence in the Appomattox Campaign ties an ordinary soldier directly to the Confederacy's collapse.
His later years as a Buffalo Soldier connect him to the frontier army and the westward expansion it enforced. The marker is honest about the hard truth here: the same campaigns that opened the West to settlement were part of the violent removal of Native peoples from their lands. Owens's story sits inside that contradiction — a man who had won his own freedom now serving a government pressing others off their homes.
That unflinching double vision is exactly why the memorial matters. It honors the courage and endurance of Black soldiers who helped save the Union and end slavery, while refusing to look away from the costs of the frontier wars they were later sent to fight. It insists that African Americans belong at the center of the nation's military history, in all its pride and all its complexity.
If you visit
This is a memorial marker, so come to it in a reflective frame of mind. There is no battlefield here to walk, no fort to tour — the power of the place is in the life it commemorates, a man carried from slavery in Kentucky to the surrender fields of Virginia to the deserts of West Texas, and finally to Corpus Christi, where he lived out his last years and was laid to rest.
Read the marker closely, because it does something many do not: it tells the whole arc, including the painful parts. Let the dates sink in — enlistment during the war, the Appomattox Campaign, the move to the cavalry, the frontier service, an early death in 1879. It is a lot of history for one lifetime, and much of it unfolded before he was thirty-five.
On a Corpus Christi trip, this makes a meaningful and grounding stop amid the city's coastal attractions. Stand a moment with the memory of a man who fought for his own freedom and then rode the frontier under the name Plains nations gave his regiment. It's a chance to remember that the Buffalo Soldiers were individuals with names and stories — and that this one chose to make his home, and his rest, right here.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George Owens
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Thomas S. Parker
Corpus Christi, TX
Philadelphia-born Thomas S. Parker came to Texas at twenty, and in 1839 he and his parents received large land grants near present-day Corpus Christi, where they raised cattle. He allied with trader Henry L. Kinney, and when Zachary Taylor's army camped near Kinney's post in 1845 — the staging ground for the war with Mexico — Parker won the contract to supply the soldiers' beef. "Col. Tom" went on to become the first sheriff of Nueces County, later a Texas Ranger and Confederate soldier, and finally Corpus Christi's city marshal, shaping the young city's commerce and law until his death in 1886.
James Downing
Corpus Christi, TX
English-born and Boston-raised, James Downing enlisted in the Massachusetts heavy artillery in 1862, survived combat at Petersburg, and escaped while being taken to the notorious Andersonville prison, making his way back to rejoin his regiment. After the war he was commissioned an officer in the 36th U.S. Colored Troops and posted to Corpus Christi, where he married into the local von Blücher family and built a long civic career—brickyard owner, voter registrar, fire chief, alderman, and city marshal. He died in Corpus Christi in 1891.
Mustang Island
Port Aransas, TX
Mustang Island, one of seven Texas barrier islands, took its name from the wild horses descended from shipwrecks and Spanish expeditions, and was long frequented by the nomadic Karankawas. Robert Ainsworth Mercer settled here in 1855 with his family, founding the El Mar Rancho, but the small community scattered during the Civil War when the USS Arthur blockaded Aransas Pass and shelled the island after settlers fired on Federal sailors in 1862. Ranchers returned after the war, and by the 1920s tourism had become the island's economic mainstay.
Nicholas Bluntzer
Banquete, TX
Born in 1835 in Alsace, Nicholas Bluntzer came to Texas at nine with the Alsatian families led by empresario Henri Castro. He rode as a scout on Robert E. Lee's 1856–57 expedition against the Comanche, fought for the Confederacy at Palmito Ranch—the war's last battle—in 1865, and afterward became an influential South Texas rancher and cotton grower, lending his name to the settlement of Bluntzer.