Fred J. Bowden, Sr.

TWO DEAD IN HOWIE MINE.

Fred Bowden and Will Crow, Young White Men, Dropped to Death Sunday Morning 265 Feet Below the Surface -- One Followed the Other in Mysterious Fashion.

At five o'clock Sunday morning Fred Bowden, pup man at the Howie mine near Waxhaw, went into the mine shaft to see what was the trouble with his pump. He never came back. When no signal came from below in a reasonable time, Will Crow, night watchman, went down to see what had become of Bowden. Crow never came back. This became alarming and hoist engineer McMurray started an investigation. Both men were found dead 265 feet below the surface in what is known at the mine as the Bull Face shaft. For some time the pumps have been working day and night to clear the shaft of water. Sunday morning something went wrong with the pump and Mr. Bowden went down for the purpose of correcting it. The theory afterwards came out that as he was going down in the bucket a large weight which works on the cable above the bucket slipped out of place and knocked him off into the water, where, if he had not been killed by the blow, he was drowned. When he did not come back, Mr. Crow, getting in the same bucket, met the same fate. Except that in the later case the weight slipped further down and bruised his head and body much worse than in the case of Mr. Bowden. When the bucket came back without Bowden, the weight had automatically readjusted itself, so that Mr. row, not perceiving it, was caught in the same trap. When he failed to appear, three other men went down, but by another route, and thus saved themselves.

The bodies were gotten out and Coroner Plyler held an inquest. The verdict was that both men came to their death by an accident the full particulars of which could not be known. The bodies were buried at Waxhaw Baptist church on Monday afternoon.

Both men who "stumbled upon death" in so tragic a way in the early hours of Sunday morning were young. Mr. Bowden was 25 or 26, and leaves a wife and two small children. Mr. Crow was 23 and unmarried.

The Monroe Journal Monroe, NC Tuesday, November 25, 1913 Page 1