In 1844 he was engaged at the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts (BMGFA), and after a three-year absence returned to that theatre where he was a frequent performer in the late 1840s.

[1] Owens was a popular comedian whose regular repertory included about fifty parts and who earned a fortune.

His Solon Shingle (1864) was famous both in the United States and in England;[2] among his other favorite characters were Dr. Pangloss (in George Colman the Younger's The Heir at Law), Caleb Plummer in stage adaptations of Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth, and the old man (Elbert Rogers) in Esmeralda, in which he last appeared in New York.

John E. Owens, describing the conduct of a bee in an empty molasses barrel, once threw a circle of his hearers almost into convulsions of laughter.

Owens was the first East Coast actor to tour to San Francisco's California Theatre in 1869 after completion.