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.

Mary Ann Powell Bass birth anniversary

A repost of my blog on the 2014 anniversary of her birth! She was born 194 years ago this year.

Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass

Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell was born on 21 Feb 1825 in Perry, Alabama, where her father had received a land grant from his service in the War of 1812.

She met and married (at age 14) Richard Bass (later to be called Col. following the Civil War) in her home town, (see Here for more on him) but they started a migration to Texas, stopping along the way for several years. By the time she was in a census at age 25, she had a daughter, Julia (9) born in Alabama, and a son, James (7) born in Louisiana, and daughter, Ellen (5) also born in Louisiana.  That census of 1850 showed the family living in Union Parish, LA.

In the 1860 census the family lived in Walker County, Texas, with a 5 month old baby Elizabeth, who was born in Texas.  Ellen is no longer listed, and another daughter, Nancy C. is 6 years old, born in Louisiana.  There's a cousin living with the family as well, whose name is Emily W. Traylor.

What is interesting about both the Union Parish LA census and especially the Walker County, Texas census, is the listing of various relatives along the same road...all farmers at this time. I'm pretty sure her parents lived on the next farm, but her younger brother who was a physician is also in the neighborhood.  

My great grandmother, Elizabeth "Bettie" Bass Rogers was born in 1861.  (More about her HERE)

Mary Ann Powell Bass died on 12 Oct 1871.  If the Ancestry.com family tree is to be believed, she had 4 more children before her death at age 46.   (Editor's note: only 3 more children were born to Mae...see correction of Bass family published soon.)


 

Here's her headstone in the  Old Waverly Cemetery.,Walker Co., Tex

Her parents were buried nearby, James Moore Powell (27 Feb 1791 Bertie County, NC - 27 Feb 1868, Walker County, TX) 
and Nancy Jones Traylor Powell (16 May 1804, Oglethorpe County, Georgia - 27 Jun 1881 in Old Waverly, Walker, Texas)  

James Moore Powell (1791-1868)

Nancy Jones Traylor Powell 1804-1881

Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell Bass

This was her birthday, the 21st of February, but I missed it this year.  I did make a post (HERE) in 2014 in her honor.  And she's part of an interesting family that traveled from North Carolina, to Alabama, to Louisiana and finally to Walker County Texas.

In Huntsville, Walker County, TX, the Historical Association meets monthly in a museum they've established, in the Gibbs-Powell house.  "It was built in 1862 by Thomas Gibbs, and the Gibbs family was often visited at the home by personal friend Sam Houston. The house has been the home to several generations of Gibbs and Powell families."

"Through the interest of Judge and Mrs. Ben H. Powell III, this home has remained unchanged, and the interior as well as the furniture and furnishings were preserved to be used as a museum."  I can't find any Ben Powells on my family tree of the descendants of James Moore Powell.  But it's likely they are cousins! (Walker County Historical Society)

Thomas Gibbs was brother of my great great grandmother Lucinda Benson Gibbs Rogers. I know I had more pictures of this house, but haven't been able to locate them yet.  So when I do, you'll get a further link!

There's a great history of Walker County Texas at Texas History on Line (HERE)