Rev. Elias Owen MA, F.S.A. (2 December 1833 – 19 May 1899) was a Welsh cleric and antiquarian whose works include The Old Stone Crosses of the Vale of Clwyd, 1886 and Welsh Folk-Lore, 1896.
Owen was born in Montgomeryshire, probably in the village of Llandysilio, the third child and eldest son of James Owen (ca.1806–1886) and Susannah Morgan (1805–1868). His father was a farmer and one of the first 12 constables in the Montgomeryshire Constabulary. James Owen was the father of at least 15 children, nine by his first wife, Susannah, and five by his second wife, Mary Morris (ca.1848–ca.1921).
Elias Owen married Margaret Pierce (1839–fl.1901) on 2 August 1858 at St. David's Church, the Welsh chapel in Brownlow Hill, Liverpool; she was the daughter of Eleanor and William Pierce, a quarryman. They had 13 children:
By the time he was six years old, the Owen family had settled in Llanidloes, about 35 miles south-west of Llandysilio. He attended the National School at Llanidloes, becoming a pupil-teacher; his occupation was given as such in the 1851 census, when he was aged 17 and living with his parents at Club Buildings, Lower Green, Llanidloes. He won a scholarship to the Oxford Diocesan Training College for Schoolmasters at Culham, about eight miles south of Oxford, from where he qualified with first-class honours.
In October 1868, he enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating with a BA in June 1871 and being awarded an MA in the spring of 1878. At this time, students were not required to attend lectures at the college and needed only to sit the end of term examinations; such students became known as "steamboat men". Owen is said to have "carried off many prizes, more especially in divinity".
Owen's only teaching appointment was as headmaster of the National School at Llanllechid, near Bangor.