Race and Ethnicity: White - Starting with O

Peter Joseph Osterhaus was a German immigrant who rose through the ranks in the Civil War to the post of major general of volunteers in U.S. Army. He fought in several Trans-Mississippi battles, including Pea Ridge and Arkansas Post, and was the most accomplished of the German-born generals who fought for the Union. Peter Joseph Osterhaus was born on January 4, 1823, in Koblenz, Prussia, the second of three sons of contractor Josef Adolf Oisterhusz and Eleanora Kraemer Oisterhusz, who chose to change their sons’ surnames to the German version. He received a military education and served in the Twenty-Ninth Reserve Regiment of the Prussian army. Osterhaus was involved in the revolutions that convulsed Europe in 1848–1849 and was forced …

Gus Ottenheimer, an industrialist, became known nationally through his successful efforts in manufacturing women’s garments. He was a land developer as well, and he spent much of the last one-third of his life promoting higher education in central Arkansas. Ottenheimer was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on July 18, 1897, to Daniel Ottenheimer and Hannah Berger. He was the youngest of four children. The Ottenheimers were a Jewish pioneer family, some of whom came to the state in the 1850s. Ottenheimer’s father died in 1908. The eldest son, Leonard, became the family breadwinner at age sixteen and forfeited his education to his younger brother. Ottenheimer graduated in 1918 from Washington & Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia, …

Perry Wayne Ouzts, a professional jockey from Lepanto (Poinsett County), is one of twenty-one professional riders to have won 5,000 races. Around horseracing tracks, he is nicknamed the “Workingman’s Hero” or, for his unique riding style, “Scoot N’ Boot.” He has also been noted for overcoming numerous potentially career-ending injuries. Perry Ouzts was born in Lepanto on July 7, 1954, but was raised primarily in Rivervale (Poinsett County). During his years in Rivervale, Ouzts began riding horses with his cousins Earlie and Jackie Fires. Earlie Fires was eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame of Jockeys, while Jackie’s career ended when his body was crushed during a horse race in 1977, paralyzing him. Ouzts began riding professionally in the spring …

Betty Overbey was a representative from Lamar (Johnson County) for District 69 in the Eighty-eighth, Eighty-ninth, and Ninetieth Arkansas General Assemblies, serving from 2011 to 2016.   Betty Warren was born on January 9, 1946, in Salus (Johnson County) to Paden Patric Warren, who was a logger, and Nola Jewel Tilton Christian Warren, who worked in the home. Warren received her early education in the Oark (Johnson County) public schools, graduating from Oark High School in 1963.   Betty Warren married George Overbey Jr., and they had three children. She became an active member of the First United Methodist Church in Lamar, where she served on the Finance Committee and as a Stephen Minister. She was a member the Lamar chapter of Order of the Eastern Star of Arkansas and of PEO, an organization that provides scholarships to help women further their education. For thirty-five years, she was an Arkansas State Revenue Agent for …

William Ray Overton was a U.S. district judge from 1979 to 1987 and is best known for his ruling in the McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education court case, which held the teaching of creationism to be unconstitutional. William Ray Overton was born on September 19, 1939, in Hot Spring County to Elizabeth Ford and Odis Ray Overton, a mine foreman at Magnet Cove (Hot Spring County). His mother, who taught several subjects in Hot Spring County’s public school system, was known for her skill with the English language; Overton joked that he got some learning in language by osmosis. Overton was an only child. His father died in 1957 when Overton was sixteen years old. In 1963, his mother …

Freeman Harrison Owens was a pioneer cinematographer and inventor of cinematic technology, including the A. C. Nielsen Rating System, a plastic lens for Kodak, and the method of adding synchronized sound to film. He is credited with 11,812 inventions and held 200 patents during his lifetime. Freeman Owens was born on July 20, 1890, in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). He was the only child of Charles H. Owens and Christabel Harrison Owens and grandson of Arkansas Supreme Court judge William M. Harrison. Owens attended Sixth and Beech Street Elementary School, but he dropped out during his senior year at Pine Bluff High School. He went to work for a movie theater when he was twelve years old. He cleaned the …

Historian George C. Wright wrote in his 1990 book Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”: “Because Afro-Americans were frequently lynched in a dramatic fashion to warn others, it is possible that much more is known about their deaths than about those of the whites who died at the hands of lynch mobs.” Such seems to be the case with the 1879 lynching of Henry Owens in Clarendon (Monroe County), which was reported in the Arkansas Gazette only at the bottom of another article describing the likelihood of a different person being lynched. On September 28, 1879, the Gazette reported that a man named Jerry Raper, “a murderer whose deed of cold blood has rarely been …

The scouting expedition from Ozark, Missouri, to Dubuque Crossing (Boone County) and Sugar Loaf Prairie (Boone County) was conducted to determine whether any Confederate soldiers were threatening a detached outpost of the Second Arkansas Cavalry (US) at Ozark. Company D of the Second Arkansas Cavalry (US) was sent to man an outpost at Ozark, Missouri, in July 1864 and was “engaged in scouting through a rough country, guarding against a surprise by the enemy.” A detachment of one officer and twenty men was sent to Arkansas on August 23, 1864, on such a mission. The Arkansas troops ventured to Dubuque, then crossed the White River and went another ten miles to Sugar Loaf Prairie. Captain John C. Bailey reported to …