A lot of
what I know about the Bells and related families comes from one of my Bell
cousins. Her grandmother, Clara Bell
Guest, was the older sister of my grandmother, Cora Bell Wheat. As keeper of the Bell family treasures, my
cousin gave me a genealogical jump start by sharing family photographs, Primitive
Baptist church minutes, and a dog-eared handwritten history of the Bell and
Powell families written in the 1880s by our great-great-aunt Lydia Powell Ray.
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| Page 1 of the "Genealogy of the Powells" by Benjamin Powell, as told to his daughter, Lydia |
The tears
and mends make it very hard to read, and I only have a photocopy of Aunt
Lydia’s “Genealogy of the Powells.”
However, I was able to decipher enough to set me on the way to
identifying my Powell ancestors. The
usual way to do genealogical research, from the present back through each
generation to the earliest ancestor, worked the other way around in this situation. I ended up working down from the earliest
ancestor listed in Lydia’s genealogy until I got to Benjamin Powell, who was
the father of the most recent Powell in my family tree—Mary Mourning “Polly”
Powell who married James W. Bell.
Although
written by Lydia, she was recording the words of her father, Benjamin Powell,
who said, “The ancestors came from Wales and settled in Virginia and moved
[from] to Halifax Co., N.C. Had two sons
one of them (my great grandfather) Dempsy Powell married a Miss Benton
[indecipherable] moved from there to Wake Co., N.C. before the Revolution
War. Raised up a family of five
daughters and four sons.” They go on to
record the names of Dempsey’s sons and daughters, daughters’ married names,
their children, and where they lived. For
example, one readable part of the document says, “The other three daughters of
my great grandfather Dempsy Powell married Sims Streeter and Temple and moved to
Middle Tenn and settled on Duck River near Shelbyville. They were all very wealthy and their children
married so far as we know, men of affluence.” (I love the Victorians!) While much information is there, it’s
sometimes hard to untangle and frustrating because so much is missing due to
the age of the document itself.
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| Map of Tennessee showing location of Duck River |
It’s been
almost 20 years since I received this document from my cousin and did the
initial research. So much is now
available on ancestry.com and from other sources that corroborates these facts
or calls them into question. For
example, Lydia does not mention Dempsey’s purported first wife, Nancy Dempsey,
at all. According to comments I have
read online, the name Nancy Dempsey first shows up in early DAR applications
and Powell researchers have not been able to find a source for it. Lydia’s genealogy seems to support the fact
that Dempsey only had one wife, a “Miss Benton,” given name Pleasant, according
to a court record that lists her as the mother of Caswell and Jesse Powell.
I remember
how exciting it was as I did find sources that mostly supported the facts that
Lydia and her father had recorded. For
example, Dempsey Powell’s home was in Wake County, North Carolina, near the
present town of Wake Forest. I recently
found a transcript online of minutes from the 1792 meeting of Commissioners in
Wake County who were viewing lands in the county for a site for the State
Capital, “establishing a place for holding the future meetings of the General
Assembly and the place of Residence of the Chief Officers of the State.” They viewed the “Land of Dempsey Powell on the
south side of Neuse at Powell Bridge Seven miles from Isaac Hunters” and
others.
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| Wake County map showing Neuse River |
Another
piece of information from Lydia’s document has proved to be correct. Dempsey received a grant of 1,977 acres
located on the Duck River in Tennessee for his service in the North Carolina
state militia. (When he was one his way
to have the land surveyed, he was shot through the heel by an Indian at
Nashville, whereupon he turned around, went back home, and hired someone else
to survey the land for him.) Upon his
death three of his daughters, Charlotte who married John Sims, Mildred who
married John Streeter, and Elizabeth who married Robert Temple, settled on
their father’s grant lands on the Duck River in Tennessee.
Lydia’s 3-page
document ends with these words: “This was written by myself Lydia C. Powell as
given to me by my father Benj. Powell son of Caswell Powell who was son of
Dempsy Powell (senior.) She adds: “My
father died near Potts Camp, Miss. in 1889 age 78 years 0 months. My mother’s maiden name was Eliza Fowler
daughter of Wm. Fowler of Paris, Tenn.”
Benjamin
Powell married Eliza Helen Fowler on 22 December 1828 in Henry County,
Tennessee. They had ten children: William Dempsey, Joseph Devereaux, Thomas A.,
Benja Ann Helen (Bennie), Georgiana Isabella, John Calvin, Mary Mourning, Lydia
Caroline, and Eliza Jane (Jimmie.) Of
the siblings, only two remained in Tennessee.
The others went to Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Eliza Helen was visiting her daughters in
Johnson County, Texas, when she died on 22 December 1882 on the 54th
anniversary of her marriage. She is
buried at Bethesda Cemetery, Burleson, Texas.
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| Eliza H. Powell headstone Bethesda Cemetery, Burleson, Texas from findagrave.com |
James W.
Bell died in 1883, and in 1894 or 1895 Mary M. Bell married George Akers and
moved to Woodford, Indian Territory.
George Akers died in 1896. On the
1900 census Mary was living in Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, with her adult
children, William, 32; Russell, 30; Kitty, 22; and Joseph, 20. William, Russell, and Joseph were working as
miners. Mary apparently died before 1910
as she does not appear on the 1910 census.
She is supposedly buried in McAlester, Pittsburg Co., OK, but I have not
been able to find her grave. Her granddaughter
Cora, my grandmother, named her only son William Powell, and he went by the
name Powell all his life.
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| 1900 Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory census |
