James Moore Powell (consolidated blogs)

Another anniversary of my great x 4 grandfather, who I wrote about last year as well as several years before.  So today I'll try to combine all those posts (and make it easier for you readers who never go to "links.")

Repost #1:

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Ah-Ha!

Where have I spent most of my time lately?  Here.  Well, with my various ancestors.  Here James Moore Powell (1791-1868) has a marker in Texas.  He had been born in North Carolina, (the state in which I now live, but nowhere near me).

Here's a census report from Louisiana, giving his wife's name and various children.

I noticed the neighbors (all farmers) were a family by the name of Traylor.  Didn't think much of it until I saw 2 Traylor children listed as living with the Powells.  Then as I noticed one of the Powell children grew up (over various census reports) and she married a man named Richard Bass, there were still these one or two Traylor children being part of the household.

Then when they moved to Texas and I again saw Traylors in the neighborhood as well as the household I went Ah Ha!!

The wife must have been a Traylor.  And by looking at the originals of many census reports back and forth, there she was.  Alabama, Louisiana, and finally Texas, she was Nancy Jones Traylor Powell (1804-1881).  I guessed the neighbors to be her brothers, the ones who had all these other children...and one must have lost his wife or maybe some of the children were orphaned, so the Powell and the Bass families took them in.  This was the way families took care of their own in the old South, and many still do.

I also have guessed some other neighbors might have had a sister Traylor marry and raise her family named Hill.  Haven't got anything that connects these famlies for sure yet.  This mystery solving has certainly attracted my attention.

It wasn't until I was telling a friend how I spent yesterday, that I realized the name sounds like trailer, so these days it might have the new-South connotation of trailer-trash.  I wonder how many if people might have changed their names because of that. (NOTE: many folks live in trailers on their family property in North Carolina and all over the south, because trailers offer complete housing compared to an older cabin which may need construction help [including indoor plumbing.])

And Nancy Jones Traylor Powell  was listed with a surname for her middle name.  Doesn't that make me think her mother might have been a Jones?  I wonder if I'll find a connection and be able to go further back in her family tree.  Even if I can't, NJ Powell was my grandfather's great-grandmother. (NOTE: on my father's side)

While my fingers continue to heal and I do my exercises instead of pottery, (and I've got more pottery than I know what to do with anyway,) the computer has become my pal. (NOTE: this was 2013) I know these people have been gone for over a hundred years.  But their bones that lie in those graves carry the same DNA as I have, and they have given me the gift of curiosity as well as creativity.  Don't you know that's carried genetically?  Why not? So this is where I'll be for a while.

Repost #2 

Thursday, February 27, 2014

GG grandfather Powell in NC

James Moore Powell
born Feb 27, 1791 in Bertie County, North Carolina, USA

Also lived in Warrentown, Warren County, NC when 29
Then he married Nancy Jones Traylor on 20 Sept when he was 31 in Perry Alabama.
Then they moved with various family members to Dallas County, Alabama, where the state capitol had been laid out at Cahaba.  This census of 1830 has him at 39, married with 2 children, in a household with 22 slaves, 9 of whom were children under 10 years old.
Then more family moved together to Union District, LA, for the census of 1840 his household consisted of James, his wife, and 4 children, one had died in 1838.  The census of that year doesn't list slaves.  Ten years later, Census of 1850, this is the same location of the family.

My great great grandmother, Mary Ann (Mae) Powell, had married Richard Bass by the time of the 1850 Census, so the children at home still are Travis 19, John 17, Wm 14, and Emily 1.  Sons Lewis, John and Dr. William Pentecost POWELL have also moved out as they became adults. 

The 1860 census finds the family living in Walker County, Texas, which is also where my GG grandmother was now living.  

James Moore Powell died at age 77 in Old Waverly, Walker County, Texas.


Repost #3

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

James Moore Powell

Great great great grandfather James Moore Powell has a birthday today, born Feb 27, 1791 in Bertie County, North Carolina.

He was a soldier in the War of 1812, for the Seventh Company of the Warren County Regiment of North Carolina.  He served in 1812, according to the muster rolls.

I covered his life, and that of his wife, Nancy Traylor Powell HERE, and here and Here! especially about their daughter, Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass.

Incidentally, when I was 69 years old, I discovered my great grandmother after whom I was named, had been born 69 years before I was.  And Nancy Traylor Powell had been born 69 years before she had, though she was on my father's side of my nuclear family.

This is NOT the home of the Powell family.  Hope Plantation, built in 1803  near Windsor, Bertie County, North Carolina. The plantation house was built by David Stone, a member of the coastal Carolina planter class, later Governor of North Carolina and a United States Senator.  I'm sharing it here because it was restored in the 1960s from a derelict condition and the property has other old buildings also restored.  I live a long way from the coastal area of North Carolina, but I'd love to visit this site.

The Powells were farming people who moved from one community to another throughout their lives.  James Powell died on the same date as his birthday, Feb. 27 in 1868 in Walker County, Texas.  So he and his family lived through the Civil War.

Walker County Texas also has some great historic sites to visit. The Texas on Line link is Here.