Bowerman, Ralph 1871 – 1900

BOWERMAN

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 3/4/2020 at 17:03:20

Source: Decorah Republican Jan. 3, 1901 P 6 C 1

A letter recently received by Mrs. D. C. Taber, from Mrs. Martha Bowerman whose home is with the family of her son-in-law, Daniel Bowerman, near Salem, Oregon, gives the particulars of the sad death of Mr. Bowerman’s old¬st son Ralph. In the letter, dated Dec. 20th, she says. “Our Ralph was run over by the cars and instantly killed last first day (Dec. l6th,) at about 6 p. m , about one mile from his home, and nine or ten miles from here. He came here seventh day and left for home about 4 o’clock (on that day) and when within a mile of his home had to cross the RR. track. Was traveling nearly the same direction as the cars, facing a heavy wind which carried the sound from him, was in a heavy lumber wagon and as the fore wheels came on the track the engine struck the wagon, killing him and both horses instantly, with no one to witness the tragedy but the engineer. The train was running at the rate of seventy miles an hour, but they gave no warning as they neared the crossing. It seems to us providential that there was a friend of Ralph's on the train who recognized him when they found him and had them back up the train a couple of miles to the depot they had just left and put him in there where he and another of Ralph's neighbors stayed with him all night and telephoned to Salem to have a messenger sent to bring information here, who arrived here about nine o’clock in the evening.
_ “ When the train stopped to gather up the wreck Ralph was found on the pilot of the engine, with no bruise or breaking of the skin, but his neck was broken where the spinal column joins the head.
“The funeral was here at the house yesterday. We have a large house and it was well filled though it was raining and the roads very muddy. I think there must have been twenty-five teams that followed the hearse to the cemetery three miles away, and there were a good many who did not go to the grave. This is a crushing blow to Daniel and Lydia as well as to the rest of us, but we mourn not as those without hope, for we believe our loss is his eternal gain. He was a noble christian man, respected by all who knew him.
I remember Ralph as a sturdy youngster in my school twenty three years ago, and later as a steady young man whose influence was always for the right.

Transcriber’s Note: Find a Grave shows he is buried in Lee Mission Cemetery in Salem, OR and was born May 28, 1871.