What can you tell me about my great-great-uncle Commodore Perry Owens?
By: Marshall Trimble 11/01/2008
What can you tell me about my great-great-uncle Commodore Perry Owens?
Connie Riley
Mount Washington, Kentucky
Owens’s trademark was his shoulder length red hair. He was born in 1852 and raised in the Midwest, running away to be a cowboy at age 13.
Elected sheriff of Apache County, Arizona, in 1886, he became involved in the Pleasant Valley War, a feud between two groups. He gained his greatest fame in a shoot-out with members of the Blevins family; in less than a minute, he killed three and wounded one.
In the years after the 1887 gunfight, he was appointed sheriff of the newly created Navajo County. After his term ran out, he moved to Seligman, where, in 1902, he married Elizabeth Barrett. In 1910, he was living in San Diego. Two years later, he was back in Seligman, running a store. He died of a brain disease in 1919, and his body was buried in Flagstaff.
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