"TAHLEQUAH, I.T., Feb. 19. -- James Bowen, a prosperous farmer living about three miles south of here, met with a horrible death late yesterday evening by lightning. He was returning from this place with a wagonload of farm implements, and just before reaching home was overtaken by a thunderstorm. As he was passing a neighbor's house a stroke of lightning, probably attracted by the steel plows and other implements in the wagon, killed both himself and the team. So terrible was the electrical stroke that the unfortunate man was thrown several feet out of the wagon and his clothing torn to shreds and set on fire and his shoes torn from his feet. The horses fell dead in their tracks and the wagon was torn to pieces. The work of the lightning was witnessed by the family of the neighbor, Mr. Wallace, whose house stood but a few yards away. Mr. Wallace ran out to extinguish the fragments of clothing on the body and found him black in the face and horribly scratched and mutilated. Bowen was 35 years old and leaves a wife and four children."
-- The Purcell Register, Feb. 26, 1892