The Powells

(David Jr. and Martha Powell were Dora Powell Keillor’s grandparents.  The write-up below is compiled by Linda Keillor Berg from reports by Raymond Powell, M. Mullins and excerpts from a report, author unknown, on Llewelyn Powell.)

There was nothing unique about the little ship that nudged its way into Baltimore harbor one blustery day In February of 1818, filled with a group of hopeful immigrants to the New World.  It was a precious cargo that had made its way from Liverpool, precious to the myriad descendants whose American roots were being transported from the Old World, a world of repression, exploitation and poverty.

Huddled together on deck that chilly morning, the young family peered into the mist to catch sight of its new homeland. It had been a grueling trip. The Welshman who had contracted with the Rathaus Iron Company to work in the coal mines of eastern Pennsylvania in exchange for his passage and that of his family — his young wife Joanna and their son Llewellyn. And Joanna was pregnant with another son, who would be called David after his father, and who would be part of a clan of Powells that would multiply and spread westward in search of all of the promises this new land held in store.

The family started here in America with these two Davids: one who continued to dream of a life spent farming the earth, and the younger one born in Baltimore within days of the ship’s docking at the foot of Bank Street.

Young David grew up in this new country, in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. In 1830 his father died, leaving Joanna with her five young ones. Llewellyn had already left home, leaving David, at the age of 12, to help his mother care and provide for the younger children.  Within two years Joanna died, leaving David on his own and the three younger ones orphaned and farmed out to other homes by the court.

Later, in the 1830s, David met Martha Ann Cox in the nearby village of Pennsboro, Pennsylvania. Martha was the daughter of William Cox, an Englishman originally from Oxfordshire.  She grew up in a family of several brothers and sisters. As with most young girls at the time, she had no formal education but received thorough instruction from her mother in the essential tools of homemaking on the frontier -- baking bread, making soap, candles, carding and spinning wool. She sewed at the age of 11 a cross-stitch sampler that remained with her throughout her life.  

David was about 20, and Martha Ann was somewhat younger when the two were married in 1838.  After they had been married, they remained in Clearfield County long enough for the birth of sons – the first stillborn, then triplets – William, Llewellyn and James Wesley, Dora Powell’s father.  Llewellyn and James Wesley survived their multiple birth. Shortly after they were born, David was on his way. David and Martha packed them and all their possessions into a wagon and the little family struck out along the pathways of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and, later, Indiana.

In Michigan, David and Martha's daughter was born, Emily Elizabeth. In the next year came Zachariah. By then David had enough of Michigan, with its biting winter winds, and once again the wagon was packed, the babies were loaded. Four small children aboard and the cow tied on behind to provide milk, and the family was on its way to Illinois.

The virgin state of Illinois didn’t satisfy David’s cravings to see the world either, even though Martha tried to convince him otherwise.  No matter how rich the soil and how abundant the harvest, no matter how warm and fragrant the basswood cabin where they lived, and no matter the four new babies (they now numbered eight). David wanted to keep moving westward.

From Malta, DeKalb County, Illinois, David recruited a group of adventurous farmers and headed for the gold fields of Colorado.  It was March 1859. David had tilled the soil long enough.  Lew and Jim were 18 and strong enough to handle the farm work for their mother. The family would not be in need with Martha and these two reliable boys on hand. So, taking the sturdiest wagon and a good team, "Captain" Powell, as he came to be called, led his party of farmers westward. It would be four years before he returned home. 

About the time that David and his group of farmers from DeKalb County started for the gold fields of Colorado, another party of hopefuls was starting out along the Platte River Route.  In their company was a young man, E. H. N. Patterson, a newspaper reporter from Chicago, whose assignment was to accompany a wagon train west and supply Chicago readers with firsthand accounts of their trek to the gold country.

They left Oquawka on March 15, 1859, intending to take a route to Pike’s Peak through Iowa to Council Bluffs and then follow the North Platte to either Fort Kearney or Fort Laramie.  Patterson’s group consisted of three wagons pulled by five yokes of cattle.

David and his travelers came upon the Patterson party on Saturday, March 19, 1859, at Kossuth, Iowa. Kossuth was a small country village, with two stores, a Presbyterian church, and a college. It was cold and snowing, and the men were weary. Since the next day was Sunday, and neither party would travel on the Sabbath, the men had an opportunity to become acquainted with one another. 

They both left camp the following Monday taking slightly different routes.  For two months, the two parties kept encountering one another – through Ottumwa, across the Des Moines River, then across the Missouri prairie. They paid dearly for hay and corn.

About 150 miles from Laramie, Wyoming, the two companies finally joined forces. Their destination was the mountains, crossing the river at Lodge Pole Creek and following the stream on Brider’s Pass Road. 

They were now in the land of the Cheyenne.  Antelope was a special treat, and during a stormy period, David's expertise with a rifle helped furnish the entire camp with an abundance of excellent meat. The Welshman was ever a generous and kindly man.  It was David who found room in his tent and shared his hospitality with William H. Long of Montgomery County, Ohio, whose boat had capsized and who had left his two companions, too ill to travel, to go for help. Mr. Long remained in David's camp until the weather cleared. When he left for Fort Kearney, he carried mail for the families back home in Illinois.

Once the weather cleared, a number of teams assembled, readying themselves to attempt fording the swollen [South Platte River?]. The river was rising daily, and as there was no other way to cross, the travelers commenced preparations. The wagon beds were blocked up, the teams united, and they started across. The crossing followed a circuitous route, and all the wagons went across safely without accident, except for David's, the last.  Just as the team was making a final lunge to pull it from the stream, the Powell wagon was upset. According to David in later years, he was able to save everything except some sugar, which "came out molasses." 

The following day the party camped on the banks of the Cache la Poudre which normally runs peacefully through a beautiful and fertile valley, but on this day, it was a deep rapid river, swollen by melting snows. A village of Cheyenne was just opposite, a hundred Indian ponies grazing on the rich buffalo grass that carpeted the valley and hill slopes. Several of the young Cheyenne men crossed the stream, swimming their ponies, and traded with the travelers. David bought a fine painted buffalo robe from one of the Cheyenne men.

Alas, the search for gold and a better way of life turned out to be futile. There was no gold to be found in that area and subsequently the men – Captain Powell, Hopkins, Battles, Augustine, Pressgrove, Marston, Porte and Patterson -- set out for Denver to see if there was gold there, as had been reported.  When they arrived, they found 3,000-4,000 men building houses, washing gold, bartering and prospecting. The claims had all been taken. 

Gold was no longer David’s major goal. He was a visionary, and saw a new land opening up in the mountains of the West that he wanted to be a part of.  And for a very few years, he played an active part in its formation. In 1861, he was elected president of the town of Canon City, Colorado [southwest of Colorado Springs].  In 1862, he was named the first county clerk for the newly formed County of Fremont, and became a member of the first Colorado State Legislature, representing Pueblo County.

With a desire to make his home in Colorado, David returned home to Illinois in 1863 for Martha Ann and the children.  But after four years braving the elements of the Western frontier in the small rural community in DeKalb County, Martha was adamant. David met his match. There was no way she was going to take her family into an untamed land filled with Indians and untamed mountain men! No promises or cajoling could move Martha to relent. David stayed, and the following June their youngest son, Edgar Alonzo, was born in the basswood cabin that had been a haven to the Powells while David had pursued his personal dream.

The Powell clan now numbered 11:  David and Martha Ann, James Wesley, Llewellyn, Elizabeth Emily, Zacharia Taylor, Isaac Newton, Harriet Beecher, Jessie Ann, William Harry, and the baby, Edgar Alonzo – encompassing a span of twenty-three childbearing years.

Soon after, the family packed the wagon once again, heading through Iowa, Illinois and then Missouri, where they once again established a home in southwest Missouri.  It was from here, King’s Point, Dade County, Missouri, that David and Martha’s children matured and spread out.  Ike and Will left for Kansas, where they were to become successful ranchers. Harriet (“Hat”), left to teach school in Oklahoma, and Edgar Alonzo left at the age of 16 and became a cowboy on his brothers’ ranch.

In 1880, David and Martha were settled in their farm in Kings Point. The crops were good. The children were grown and gone.  Life was becoming dull for the Welshman. He was only 62.  And then came word from Hat that she had obtained land under the Homestead Act.  She was down in Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, at a place called Hennessy. She wrote asking whether her parents would like to join her.  David and Martha left the farm in the hands of a capable hired hand and joined Hattie and their other daughter Jessie, who with her husband Jack Hubbard had also taken a claim in Oklahoma.  Over the next several years David and Martha traveled back and forth between the family farms in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

James Wesley, Llewellyn, and Zach had settled in Charles City and Thornton, Iowa. It was while in Kansas, visiting Edgar, that David wrote the following letter to his son James Wesley in Thornton.  

January 17, 1890 

Dear Children, 

We received your very welcome letter today. Was glad to hear from you and that you were well.  We are all well down here except some have a slight touch of this influenza that is going the rounds. Well, it’s been a long time since I wrote to you, your last I received in OK.  The only excuse I have to offer is that I have been unsettled. Since I wrote to you, I have been back to MO. The crops are good there…..

Well, on my return to OK, Jack and Jessie moved down to OK with me.  Jack has got a claim there, very fair.  One mile north of where I built on Hattie’s claim, I built a house 21r x 24r, one-story of pickets, shingle roof, 6 windows and 2 doors, divided and will be when finished one like my house in MO.  Dug a well 20 feet deep, plenty of water, and put up a stable for 10 head of stock, covered with hay.  I am very comfortable, I am, and so it is with Hattie. I have been up here some five weeks.  I will start as soon as the weather and roads will permit it.  You have had about 4 inches of snow and it has been a little cold, they say not down to zero. I want to take about 75 bushels of corn from Iowa with me.  I will come up in 4 ½ days.  It will take me about six days to go back.

I want to get my things together once more and think they will stay there. They are badly scattered now. I want to get corn enough together for my springs to work or all I can. I may make a trip to Chickasaw Nation for corn while I have Ed’s team. By the way, Ed has a girl baby about 10 days old. I will make another trip back here after Hattie's cattle. She now has six head. It is about 150 miles from here, about 100 from Iowa across the Strip.

Baker is doing very well. Ike and Will shipped 41 carloads of hogs and cattle. They have done very well at it.  Ed intends to go preaching in the spring. I am afraid he will see hard times. This is a hard country on preachers.   

Well, I or we would like to see you all once more in this world, but it is hard to tell.  It is not likely that we shall all meet again. If the Strip comes in or is open for settlement this summer, you may come down and take a claim as I am a mile and a quarter from it.  There is fine land on Turkey Creek joining OK.  You can come in cars to Hennessey.  We are 5 miles NW on the west side of Turkey Creek, Sec. 5, Town 18, R8.  Hennessey will make us a fine town as there is in OK.

Well, I will close and try to write a letter to Lew this evening. Tell Zack I would like to get a letter from him or his. Our love and best wishes to all. 

Yours affectionately, D and M. Powell 

P.S.  I wish you would send one or both of the twin girls down. Send them to Hennessey, Indian Territory, OK. 

From a report written about Llewellyn Powell:

About the time that the parents, David and Martha, were preparing to leave DeKalb County, Illinois, for Missouri, James married and moved to Iowa, where he remained most of his life. Llewellyn and Zachariah moved to Iowa also. 

The Civil War had just ended and the people were free finally to make decisions concerning their own lives. Like the majority of young men of that era, the three brothers were primarily farmers and carpenters, trades learned of necessity. 

There are several indications of visits made by Llewellyn and by Zachariah to their family in Missouri and later in Kansas. After his sister Jessie had left her husband and returned to Kansas, it has been said that Lew built a house for her on land she had managed to buy. He also accompanied Jessie to Oklahoma in about 1900 to move the body of her young son from its burial place at Homestead and take it to Hennessey, Oklahoma, to lie beside his grandfather David. 

Lew was a portly gentleman, with a large stomach. He and James Wesley all their lives enjoyed looking as much alike as possible - if one had a mustache, the other had a mustache; if one grew a goatee, so did the other. It could well have been that their father's absence during their late teens, and the responsibilities carried by these two young men, formed ties that remained constant throughout their lives. 

James Wesley's youngest son was named for Llewellyn and for Zachariah -- "Lew Z." Powell, b. 1886 in Thornton, Iowa.  He lived in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, in his own home, and was still driving his car in 1982.  He has suggested that more about Llewellyn be searched for in the Marshalltown, Iowa area, so hopefully this account will carry an addendum at some future date.

James Wesley’s move to Anoka, Minn.  From the U.S. Census, etc.

James Wesley lived in Thornton, Iowa until 1902, when he moved to Anoka, Minnesota.  Most likely he was following his oldest son Frank, who was registered in the census as living in Anoka in 1885, when Frank would have been 16.  When James Wesley moved to Anoka in 1902, the entire family was once again together. Dora and Della, both 22, Leora, 31, Mary, 24, Lew Z., 15, and Eva, 11.

Some say that Dora came earlier to attend St. Cloud State Teachers College at the age of 16.  James Wesley worked as the superintendent of the Anoka Western Union office.

Both Dora and Della worked together in Anoka as the first women telegraphers in the U.S., listed under the single name, D. Powell.  One would take the morning shift, go home for lunch, change clothes with her twin who would then return to the telegraph office with no one in the office suspecting a thing.  “Grandma and Aunt Dell had so much fun with their telegraphy job, especially with their ability to keep their dual identity secret,” said Elizabeth.  “By changing clothes at lunchtime, they appeared to be the same person, and by listing their identity with a first initial, either of them could cash each check without anyone being the wiser. They didn't even have to endorse it with a first name! Grandma Dora still enjoyed the memory when she told us about it 60 years later.”