mission station on Hlomo amabutho, the site of Owen's camp at
Umgungundlovu. The concrete cross is a bell tower, all that remains of a 1969 church building that was torched during political unrest in the 1980s. Owen was born in
Chelsea, London, in 1802. In 1836 was a vicar in
Normanton, West Yorkshire when he attended a lecture given by a retired naval captain,
Allen Francis Gardiner, who was seeking a missionary to convert the Zulu people to Christianity. (who later became a botanist in South Africa) and a maidservant called Jane Williams, later Jane Bird. Owen's mission was not a success. Dingane was deeply suspicious of the Christian teaching and the journal includes accounts of his many interrogations of Christian beliefs. Owen found many local practices strange and brutal compared to life in Yorkshire and viewed the Zulu King as a barbarian and a tyrant. Owen's belief, expressed in his journal and common amongst missionaries at the time, was that anyone not baptised in the church was bound for eternal damnation. This attitude only changed in South Africa in the 1860's with the preachings of
John Colenso. When Retief's party arrived in the Zulu capital in February 1838, Owen was invited by the king to help draw up a written agreement for the allocation of some Zulu land for Retief and his Boer settlers. This was done with the help of a twelve-year-old boy called William Woods who could speak both Zulu and English. As the settlers prepared to leave,
Dingane invited them to a farewell celebration where he had them all killed. The description of the massacre provided by Owen is largely aligned with that of Woods who wrote his account several years later and the oral record passed down by Zulu witnesses. The agreement drafted by Owen was later found in a leather satchel beside Retief's remains. Dingane sent assurances to Owen that he and the British people staying in his mission would not be killed, but the king was not trusted. It is possible that they survived through a deliberate misinterpretation. In his journal, After several further tense interviews with the king, they were finally able to leave his capital for Port Natal (
Durban). The Owens, Woods junior and his mother were still in Port Natal when Dingane sent a retaliatory force to destroy the town. Fortunately, a ship called the
Comet, had just anchored in the bay and they were able to take shelter aboard. There is a memorial to him in this church. In 1857, his wife remarried another clergyman, John Livesey. She died in 1863, aged 54. ==Literary references==