OBIT: Mollie BOWERS, 1880, Blair County, PA

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ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE.
Mollie Bowers Dies Within Two Hours After Being Taken to the Poor 
House.

  The TRIBUNE Saturday morning contained a brief notice of Chief Powell 
finding this wretched woman in Smith's woods, west of the city limits, 
and taking her to the poor house Friday evening.  He reached the county 
home about half-past 9 o'clock, and shortly before 12 o'clock her 
spirit took flight.  This woman, for a number of years, led an eventful 
life in this city, figuring in police circles no little, and every year 
going down deeper in the scale of degradation.  Between her lewdness, 
dissipation and exposure, and the abuse she had received, her life was 
about as miserable as any life could be made.  She is said to have been 
a handsome woman before she set out on a dissolute life, and even in 
death, as a TRIBUNE representative saw her, her appearance indicated 
that she had been equal to the representation.  Recently she had been 
living with an old German Kotzemyer, in a shanty a few yards distant 
from the place where Chief Powell found her last Friday evening.  On 
the preceding day she had been wandering about aimlessly in the woods, 
having been driven out of the house by Kotzemyer because she would not 
do the washing, which the neighbors say she was wholly unable to do.  
On the evening in question some women observed her crawling on all 
fours in the road, bring up at the gate of a house, and who proposed to 
carry her back to Kotzemyer's home, but the wretched woman stoutly 
demurred to the proposition, saying that Kotzemyer would "kill her."  
They then carried her to the edge of the wood, made her a bed under an 
oak with some pieces of carpet, when Kotzemyer appeared on the scene 
and shook the woman somewhat roughly.  She was laboring under a fit at 
the time, when a kind, stout German woman remonstrated against his 
rough and cruel treatment.  Kotzemyer became greatly incensed at the 
lady for her rebuke, and applied to her some very ugly names.  It was 
her turn to be angry, and seizing a stick administered to the man a 
half dozen well-directed blows, driving him away.  Mollie Bowers then 
plead to be taken to the poor house, the Major was notified, the 
necessary papers made out, and the Chief accompanied by the stout 
German woman and a young lady assistant, Mollie was escorted "over the 
hill to the poor house" only to die.  Her child, 4 years old, 
accompanied them and is now in the same institution - a poor, ill-used 
looking waif.  She had a son who was killed on the railroad.  Her 
brother passed through the war unscathed, and was also killed on the 
railroad.  Her father died suddenly, and her mother died at an advanced 
age on Ninth avenue.  It is said that Mollie more recently drank 
alcohol in large quantities when she had the means to get it, and she 
could generally find ways and means to procure money.  Two nights 
before her death she had not been inside of a house but slept in the 
open air with her helpless child alongside of her.  Her death was 
evidently caused from abuse, exposure and excessive use of alcohol.  
When a TRIBUNE reporter saw her lying a corpse in the poor house, he 
observed a black spot under her left eye, which was produced by a blow 
from some one.  Her ending is a sad one, but it is a release from a 
life that must have been intensely miserable, and to which death itself 
must have been a grateful boon.  Her remains were interred in the poor 
house cemetery Saturday evening.  Sinning and sinned against, there 
comes a day when she and her partners in guilt will stand before the 
Great Judge "to answer for the deeds done in the body."  May it be well 
with poor, Mollie Bowers!

Morning Tribune, Altoona, Pa., Monday, August 16, 1880