Gomer Gower is a name mentioned in many books about Thurber. He was a resource for Mary Jane Gentry in her master\u2019s thesis, \u201cThurber: The Life and Death of a Texas Town,\u201d \u201cA Way of Work and a Way of Life\u201d by Marilyn D. Rhinehart, and various other books on the town and the way of life in it. However, he himself isn\u2019t expanded upon much outside of a few personal matters mentioned in the letters he wrote to Gentry that made it into the appendix of her book.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gower was born on November 25, 1869, in Glamorganshire, Wales, to Thomas and Elizabeth Gower. He was the fifth of eight children and was 10 when his family moved to the United States. His family settled in Rentchler Station, Illinois, until early 1882. From there, they moved to Savana, \u201cIndian Territory,\u201d now known as Oklahoma, where he and his father were employed as miners. While here, his family lived in a four-room house with a Scotsman before moving into a rented log cabin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the age of 14, Gower fell ill with Malaria, very luckily surviving. In 1883, his family left Savanna and moved to Gordon, Texas, under the doctor’s recommendation. On May 1, 1883, there was a reduction in wages for the Savanna miners, which sparked the first miners\u2019 strike in what was then Indian Territory. Gower recounts there being no organization of miners and no labor organizations to help the workers with the discussion, as well as the company telling the miners to, \u201creturn to work or get out of the Territory.\u201d In Gordon, Gower and his father were miners until the mine closed in January of 1886. In August that same year, he moved to Lehigh, Oklahoma, and continued his mining profession.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between 1886 and 1892, he moved to Breckenridge, Texas, and, in 1892, he married his wife Mary \u201cMollie\u201d Veale Smith. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Thurber, Texas, which is where all 6 of his children were born. Gower states his friendship with Colonel Hunter, of whom the name might be recognized as the second head of the Thurber company town. He mentions he was employed under Colonel Hunter when Hunter passed away in 1900. \u201cHe was truly an outstanding character of whom it can be truthfully said, \u201che was a winner.\u201d \u2026at once ruthless and yet kind.\u201d During his time in Thurber, he worked many different jobs and helped in many different social activities. He helped the Knights of Pythias, of which he was a member, host to an anniversary ball, a ball-style party for a local woman, the first Labor Day celebration of the town, and various other events. He worked as a weighman, a member of the United Mine Workers of America, a miner, a superintendent, a mine boss, and more during his time in Thurber.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Parade](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2022\/11\/Close-up-of-parade-float-for-mary.jpg\")
In the early 1900\u2019s, Gower was a delegate in many discussions of miners\u2019 wages and working conditions improvements. In 1920, he represented the operators of the Thurber mines during a discussion on an increase in the price of explosives and therefore an increase in the amount of money taken out of miner paychecks. This resulted in a halt on the raising of prices and the creation of a new commission for price regulation. He served on this commission, the explosives subcommittee, and the machine committee, all as a representative of mine operators. He also served on the State Mining Board for bituminous coal mining and the Resolutions Committee under the Texas Federation of Labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1937, Gomer Gower was head of an operation with Ab-Tex to reopen mines 1, 3, and 10 to retrieve materials left behind by the miners after the mines closed to help with the war efforts of World War II. Most of what was retrieved was machinery, tools, copper wires, and other metals. He had a difference of opinion with the safety measures taken, which cut his time with the company short before the operation was switched into the hands of the Federal Bureau of Mines. Before this switch, there were 3 deaths caused by a mixture of gases that suffocated those who inhaled it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Mine](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2025\/05\/2006.20.26-1.jpg\")
Gomer Gower helped Thurber, Thurber\u2019s miners, and even people of other mining towns for most of his life. He passed away September 8, 1958, in Poteau, Oklahoma at the age of 88. He was survived by 8 grandchildren, 3 children, and 2 siblings. His wife had passed away 18 years prior, along with 3 of his children and 5 of his siblings. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mary Leak Gomer Gower is a name mentioned in many books about Thurber. He was a resource for Mary Jane Gentry in her master\u2019s thesis, \u201cThurber: The Life and Death of a Texas Town,\u201d \u201cA Way of Work and a Way of Life\u201d by Marilyn D. Rhinehart, and various other books on the town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":4594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":35,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-of-thurber"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"lhart","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/author\/lhart-2-2-2\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2025\/05\/2006.20.26-300x188.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["People of Thurber<\/a>"],"unlinked":["People of Thurber<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 11 months ago","modified":"Updated 11 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on May 31, 2025","modified":"Updated on May 31, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on May 31, 2025 8:36 pm","modified":"Updated on May 31, 2025 8:37 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4597"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4599,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions\/4599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}