In May of 2023, a team of Taskforce members were digitizing historic Gandy documents at the home of the late Martha Gandy, long-time historian of Montgomery County, and her husband Harley Gandy. Their daughter was clearing out the home and packing up some of her mother’s items to take to her home. Holding up a white serving platter from the kitchen where she was packing things up, she turned to a team member saying, “I believe this is the famous platter that played a part in the Montgomery Miracle.”
Of course, we were all intrigued and wanted to know the story. She began to tell the story of her great-grandmother Martha Bowe Addison and the near-fatal gun accident involving her son John Bowe that played out at their family’s childhood home in the city of Montgomery.
In 1910, John Bowe Addison went rabbit and bird hunting with friends. He had stuck a pistol in his belt and, while crawling through a fence, accidentally shot himself in the abdomen. His friends rushed him back to the house and laid him out on a long table in his mother’s boarding house. His mother, a widow with three children, used a shotgun to summon help by shooting it into the air from her front yard.
The doctor arrived and he gave John Bowe’s mother instructions to clean out the parlor room, take down the drapes, mop and clean the room to prepare for surgery. After preparations, John Bowe was placed on the table and his mother, along with others, held lamps so the doctor could see as he made incisions to clean out the bullet fragments. The doctor worked throughout the night repairing the holes in the teen’s intestines and would place the repaired intestines on a large meat platter brought in from his mother’s kitchen.
John Bowe lived through the night, healed, and lived to serve his country as a private in the US Army. He died in Montgomery County at 84 years old. The story of his recovery has become known as the Montgomery Miracle.
The late Martha Gandy, whose documents were being digitized at her family home in Conroe, was the daughter of Lu Delle Addison Adams, the younger sister of John Bowe. Martha Gandy was the great niece of John Bowe Addison.
Source: Montgomery County Historical Society; Addison-Gandy family
Of course, we were all intrigued and wanted to know the story. She began to tell the story of her great-grandmother Martha Bowe Addison and the near-fatal gun accident involving her son John Bowe that played out at their family’s childhood home in the city of Montgomery.
In 1910, John Bowe Addison went rabbit and bird hunting with friends. He had stuck a pistol in his belt and, while crawling through a fence, accidentally shot himself in the abdomen. His friends rushed him back to the house and laid him out on a long table in his mother’s boarding house. His mother, a widow with three children, used a shotgun to summon help by shooting it into the air from her front yard.
The doctor arrived and he gave John Bowe’s mother instructions to clean out the parlor room, take down the drapes, mop and clean the room to prepare for surgery. After preparations, John Bowe was placed on the table and his mother, along with others, held lamps so the doctor could see as he made incisions to clean out the bullet fragments. The doctor worked throughout the night repairing the holes in the teen’s intestines and would place the repaired intestines on a large meat platter brought in from his mother’s kitchen.
John Bowe lived through the night, healed, and lived to serve his country as a private in the US Army. He died in Montgomery County at 84 years old. The story of his recovery has become known as the Montgomery Miracle.
The late Martha Gandy, whose documents were being digitized at her family home in Conroe, was the daughter of Lu Delle Addison Adams, the younger sister of John Bowe. Martha Gandy was the great niece of John Bowe Addison.
Source: Montgomery County Historical Society; Addison-Gandy family
