Cherokee County Oklahoma Obits - presented by Genealogy Trails

Cherokee County, Oklahoma Obits and Death Notices

James Bowen

February 26, 1892

From 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 wagon load of farm implements, and just before reaching home was overtaken by a thunder storm. 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.
Submitted by Dale Donlan

Tiana Rogers, Cherokee wife of Sam Houston died November 4, 1838 of complications from pneumonia. Tiana Roger's exact date of birth is unknown, but historians believe she was born sometime around 1796. Tiana's father, a white man named John Rogers was known as "Hell-Fire Jack." He was also known as "Old Headman Rogers." He was “one of the most conspicuous white men in the whole Cherokee Nation.” Ole Hell-Fire Jack was a Scots trader who was educated, wealthy and threw such famous Christmas parties that they were wrote about in missionary records.Tiana's mother was Jennie Due, sister to Oo-loo-te-ka, a Cherokee chief known to the white man as "Chief Jolly." Their massive Cherokee village was set up on Hiwassee Island in Tennessee, near present day Dayton. Tiana was only ten years old when a tall striking lad walked into the village one day carrying a copy of The Iliad in one hand, and a rifle in the other.He took up with Tiana's two half-brothers, John and James Rogers, and he called himself, Sam Houston. The great chief adopted the lad as his own son, and gave him the name, "The Raven." "The Raven and Tiana were married May 1830 by Cherokee laws. White people did not always recognize this marriage as his first wife never gave him a divorce. The Raven and Tiana either bought, or built a large log cabin and named it "The Wigwam Neosho," where Houston set up his famous Trading Post. The location of The Wigwam is described as being, "near the Neosho River, a little above Cantonment Gibson, and thirty miles from the lodge of Oo-loo-te-ka." They divorced after he moved to Texas, but legend says that they never fell out of love with each other, and he did not remarry until after her death. It is said that John E. Gunter's sister of Muldrow was said to be living with Tiana when she died. Her grave was located on a hill near the mouth of Skin Bayou at the Old Arkansas River steamboat port of Wilson's Rock. However the grave of Tiana Rogers is now located at Ft. Gibson National Cemetery in the circle around the flag among army officers and their wives.