Revolution Road Trip: Dempsey Powell and Wake Forest

Leaving Kings Mountain, we drove through the small town of Lowell, looking for a place to eat. We found a great little diner called "Grits 'n Greens." Even at lunch, we couldn't escape history. We noticed that the large photographs on the walls were all of child textile mill workers in the late 1800's. One of us said, "I wonder if that has anything to do with Lowell, Massachusetts?" We googled, and sure enough, Lowell, North Carolina, took that name because they hoped to become a center of textile production. We were definitely in North Carolina, not Massachusetts, because the menu was all-Southern. I had the BLT with fried green tomatoes, and Tim had the special--fried chicken with greens and fried okra. Yum yum!

We were on our way to Wake County, North Carolina, to stay the night with my brother's brother-in-law and his family, and then on to Wake Forest to explore the area where our Powell ancestors lived. We were met with Southern hospitality, a great dinner, and fun by the pool, playing a colonial game called Shut the Box. I am completely addicted! It is a simple game, but so much fun, especially with a big group of family.

Shut the Box!

The next morning after breakfast by the pool, we took off for Wake Forest, about 40 minutes away. We were looking for the home of Jesse Powell, the son of our 5th great-grandfather, Dempsey Powell (See The Powells) and the brother of our 4th great-grandfather, Caswell Powell. We had the history of the house from an online article about downtown Wake Forest and the address from the Wake Forest Historic Preservation Plan, also available online.

I typed the address into Google Maps, and we found ourselves in Wake Forest on Capital Boulevard, a highway running past self-storage units and car lots. We couldn't imagine how there could be a 200+-year-old house where it was supposed to be. I didn't even see the little road running parallel to the highway and into a wooded area, but my brother did. He got us turned around to make another run at it, and this time we pulled off the highway and down a little road/driveway to find the Jesse Powell House, built about the year 1800.

According to the Wake Forest Downtown article, "Powell built the beautiful symmetrical Federal house that still stands on the east side of Capital Boulevard. He had inherited 318 acres on the north banks of the Neuse River after his father, Dempsey Powell, died in 1793, and later added several hundred more." We can also add Jesse to our list of education-minded family members; in 1826 he founded the Pleasant Grove Academy just across the road from the house.

In addition, he was responsible for building a road through Wake Forest, long known as the Powell Road and now part of South Main Street. Tim and I spent some time on North Main Street, walking through the historic district and admiring the beautiful houses and gardens. When I got home and did some research, I found out why the Jesse Powell House still stands, even so close to the highway. It was a conscious decision by the highway planners.

In a memorandum concerning the "Proposed Improvement of US 1, from US 401 Northward to Wake Forest Bypass, Wake County," dated 1972 and available through Google Books, the director of the survey staff made these statements: "We believe that the Powell House is of considerable importance, historically and especially architecturally...The house was built about 1800 by the Powell family, probably by Jesse Powell, son of Dempsey Powell, a soldier in the American Revolution...We believe that the Powell House is one of the very finest Federal country houses in Wake County and among the significant buildings of its type in the state. Its importance is such that if this alternate [the choice of highway direction] is selected, we urge strongly that you consider an arrangement that would not disturb it." And they did.

Dempsey Powell was our second connection to the Revolutionary War, and we were headed to Edenton, North Carolina, home of our Ming ancestors, where we would learn that the citizens of Edenton, especially the ladies, had a most interesting role in the lead up to the American Revolution.

Bridge to the Past

Ever since I began this blog I have been looking for a photograph for the masthead. I wanted something that said “bridge” and “past.” I had a few pictures of me, standing on bridges, but nothing seemed exactly right. I just realized I have the perfect photo—my favorite photograph from a trip to Great Britain and France in the summer of 2012.

Wales is the reason I went on the trip. I’ve been fascinated with the country since reading Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy in the 1960’s and the fascination only grew as I became a middle school librarian in the 1970’s and read the Newbery Award-winning Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper. When I found out that a high school teacher was sponsoring a trip to England and France that would include two days in Wales, I had to go. It still gives me goosebumps when I remember looking out the window of our hotel dining room and seeing the ruins of Dinas Bran, a location that figured prominently in the Dark Is Rising books.

Llangollen, the town, is on the River Dee, which was flowing fast and hard on the rainy days we visited it. The bridge was built in 1345. If that doesn’t say “past,” I don’t know what does.

When I read those books in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I didn’t know that I might be Welsh myself. The country seems to crop up again and again as a place my ancestors might have come from. At the very least, I’m pretty sure my Powell ancestors came from there, as Lydia Powell recorded in her “History of the Powells.” It may seem crazy, but I believe more and more that we are drawn, sometimes without even knowing why, to the places our ancestors called home.

What's in a Name?

A friend of mine recently got her DNA results from Ancestry.com and was showing me her Ethnicity Estimate. I remembered that Ancestry had come out with a whole new version of ethnicity results last fall, and I had never really looked at mine since the new version appeared on their website. So I did.

On a previous post, "Where in the World Am I From?" I reported the results from my first ethnicity profile on Ancestry. I was 44% Central European, 33% British Isles, 21% Scandinavian, and 2% Uncertain. I knew that Ancestry got a lot of flak from experts in the field of DNA genealogy for the high proportion of Scandinavian ancestry in a large number of people who wouldn't be expected to have it. I wasn't especially skeptical of my Scandinavian numbers, because first of all, it's cool to be a Viking, and second, I figured my Irish and Scots forefathers probably did have some Scandinavian ancestry.

Well, now they don't. My new Ethnicity Estimate is 79% Great Britain, 15% Ireland, and 6% Trace Regions. These include 3% Europe East, 1% Europe West, 1% Italy/Greece, <1% Scandinavian, and <1% Iberian Peninsula. I've gone from 21% Scandinavian to less than 1%. However, I'm not really surprised at my overwhelmingly English/Scots/Irish roots, as I would be hard-pressed to find a surname in my tree that can't be traced to those regions.

I thought it might be fun to do a little survey of the surnames in my tree--where they come from and what they mean. Since none of my ancestors are recent immigrants and I haven't been able to trace very many of them conclusively to their mother country, surnames are the only evidence I have for country of origin. Let's see if my surname origins match up with the origins that Ancestry.com estimated from my DNA.

FYI: Surnames did not come about until the Middle Ages, when populations grew large enough that individuals with the same given names had to be differentiated from each other. There are four major ways in which surnames were given: based on the father's name (for example, Johnson, "son of John"); based on the occupation of the individual (John the Baker, John the Carpenter, etc.); based on a place (John Hill, John Meadows, John London); or based on a characteristic (John Little, John Brown.)

On my dad's dad's side, I have Smith, Williams, Simmons, and Soles. Just for fun, let's throw in Banks and Perkins, the surnames belonging to my brother's y-DNA matches. We know they are related to us--we just don't know how. I'm using Ancestry.com's surname information, which can be found at www.ancestry.com/learn/facts.

SMITH--English: occupational name for a worker in metal
WILLIAMS--English (also very common in Wales): son of William
SIMMONS--English (southern): son of Simon, or Anglo-Norman: son of Simund
SOLES--Old English; from sol, a muddy place, or possibly from Middle English (Latin solus), "single" or "unmarried", or if spelled
SOULE or SOULES--uncertain origin; perhaps derived from "soul" as a term of affection
BANKS--English or Scottish: name for someone who lived on the slope of a hill or by a riverbank
PERKINS--English (also mid and south Wales): son of Perkin

On my dad's mom's side, surnames include Castle, Sargent, Bays, Day, Lewis, Reed, Horton, Kendrick, Lea, Oney, McGrady, Cock, Patrick, and Henson.

CASTLE--English: someone who lived or worked at the castle (However, if the original spelling was Kassell or Cassell, as many Castle genealogists have speculated, my Jacob "the Longhunter" would have had a German, not English, origin.)
SARGENT--English and French: originally, an occupational name for a servant
BAYS--English: son of Bay
DAY--English: a pet form of David or other personal name; or, from a root word meaning "to knead" (related to dough), name for a dairy maid or servant of either sex
LEWIS--English (but most common in Wales): from the Norman personal name Ludovicus, or from the Welsh Llywelyn, or from the Irish/Scots Lughaidh
REED--English: nickname for a person with red hair or a ruddy complexion
HORTON--English: from one of many places in England with this name; from Old English horh "dirt" + tun "enclosure" or "settlement"
KENDRICK--Welsh, Scottish, or English: from the Welsh personal name Cynrig; shortened version of the Scots MacKendrick; or from the English Cyneric, meaning "royal power"
LEA--English: someone who lived near a meadow
ONEY--English: probably originally Olney, from two different places in England. One meant "Olla's island"; one was originally Onley, "single" + "clearing"
MCGRADY--Irish: son of Bradach, "proud"
COCK--English: "male bird or fowl," originally someone who struts like a rooster, then became generalized to "youth" and incorporated in names such as Alcock and Hancock
PATRICK--Scottish and Irish: son of Padraig, originally Latin Patricius, "son of a noble father"; popularized, of course, by St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland
HENSON--English: son of Henne (short for Henry), Hayne, or Hendy

On my mom's dad's side, I have Wheat, Farris, Stephenson, Whitley, Ming, Beasley, Fullen, Bordley, and Logan.

WHEAT--English: grower or seller of wheat, from hwit, meaning "white" because of its use in making white flour
FARRIS--Scottish: son of Fergus; in southeast England, possibly variant of Farrar, "worker in iron," "shoer of  horses" 
STEPHENSON--English and Scottish: son of Stephen; sometimes shortened to Stinson. My Stephensons are supposed to be Scottish.
WHITLEY--English: place name, from hwit "white" + leah "wood"
MING--English: of uncertain origin; perhaps from shortened version of personal name, Dominick
BEASLEY--English: from a place in Lancashire; perhaps beos, meaning "bent grass" + leah, meaning "woodland clearing"
FULLEN--English: same origin as Fuller, an occupational name for a person who helped make cloth by wetting and walking on it
BORDLEY--English: place name, originally bord, "board" + leah, "woodland clearing"
LOGAN--Scottish or northern Irish: from a place name, originally lagan, "hollow"

And finally, from my mom's mom's side of the family: Bell, Roberts, Powell, Fowler, Crudup, Cooper, Battle, Dixon, and Huff. DNA evidence also points to Pharris, Broyles, and Wilhoit.

BELL--Scottish or northern English: bell maker, or someone who lived near the bell
ROBERTS--English: son of Robert. Very frequent in Wales and west central England.
POWELL--English (of Welsh origin): Anglicized form of Welsh ap Hywel, "son of Hywel," a personal name meaning "eminent"
FOWLER--English: occupational name for a bird-catcher (a common medieval occupation)
CRUDUP--Probably an Americanized version of North German Gratop, a nickname for an old man. From German gra (gray) + top (braid)
COOPER--English: occupational name for a maker and repairer of wooden barrels
BATTLE--English and Scottish (of Norman origin): habitational name from the place of a battle
DIXON--Northern English: son of Dick
HUFF--English: habitational name, meaning "spur of a hill." German: from the personal name Hufo. My Huffs were Dutch, so probably the German meaning.
PHARRIS--Irish variant of Farris. I'm still not completely certain that my Farris and Pharris ancestors weren't originally the same family.
BROYLES--American form of German Breuhl (one of my Germanna families)
WILHOIT and various spellings--German: from Willeit, wil "small settlement" + leite "slope" (another Germanna family)

Kindof fascinating, isn't it? Certainly bears out the ethnicity estimate of almost 95% Great Britain and Ireland. It's also fun to see what characteristics distinguished a person or place back then and to compare medieval occupations to those we have today. Can you imagine having a job that required you to walk on wet cloth or catch birds?

Try this little exercise with your own list of surnames. What does it tell you about the origins and occupations of your ancestors?

Merry Christmas! You're Going to North Carolina

On Christmas Eve I surprised my brother with his semi-annual nostalgic gift. It was a framed photo of the farmhouse my Castle great-grandparents rented from Dr. Fred S. Clinton when they first moved to Red Fork sometime in the 1910's. Dr. Clinton was a physician and co-owner of the Sue Bland, the first well to strike oil in Tulsa County. Clinton Middle School, where my brother and I attended 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, still sits on the site of the original farmhouse. When we attended Clinton Junior High School, it was in the original school building, built in 1925.

Clinton Junior High School in 1925
From the Beryl Ford Collection/Tulsa Historical Society

I had never seen a photograph of the Clinton farmhouse, but I attended a meeting with my grandmother when a painting of the old house was presented to the school. I wasn't even sure that a photograph of the house existed. A little research uncovered the fact that a photograph of the house was available from the Tulsa Historical Society. Voila!

Clinton Farmhouse
From the Beryl Ford Collection/Tulsa Historical Society

Tim really liked the photo, and he had a surprise of his own. During the gift opening portion of the evening, he leaned over to me and said, "Your gift from us is that we are going to North Carolina this summer." On our previous trips to Kentucky and Tennessee we had talked about how so much of our family had come from North Carolina and how neither of us had ever been there. As usual, we'll try to combine the genealogical and the historical. So where are we planning to go?

1. I'm thinking that our first stop in North Carolina will be Asheville, right on I-40, which will be our route out of Oklahoma, straight through Tennessee, and on to North Carolina. We can't visit North Carolina without seeing Biltmore and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains.

2. Our Powell ancestors came predominantly from Wake Co., NC. The narrative written by our great-great-aunt Lydia from information given to her by her father Benjamin (See "The Powells") says that the Powell ancestors came from Virginia to Halifax Co., NC, then to Wake Co. before the Revolutionary War. Dempsey Powell was the patriarch of this family, and his name can be found on the 1790 and 1800 censuses in Wake Co. Fortunately, the county seat of Wake Co. is Raleigh, which is also the capital and location of the State Archives. It's also right on I-40.

I hope that some pre-trip research will help me determine if there are any Powell-related sites to see in Wake Co. The home of Dempsey Powell (or of his son Dempsey Jr.--sources vary) still was standing in Wake Co. in the 1960's. I found references to the home of Dempsey Powell's son Jesse that is on the National Register of Historic Places in Wake Forest. I'm hoping to convince my brother to let me have half a day at the Archives. According to the catalog of the Archive holdings, there is a box that contains information about Dempsey Powell's military service in the Revolution and a folder that contains the bounty land warrant awarding Dempsey Powell his land on the Duck River in Tennessee for his service. Surely Tim will want to see that.

3. It's only 3 hours from Raleigh to Roanoke Island. I can't be that close and not visit the site of the Lost Colony that has fascinated me since I first read about it 50 years ago. We can't see North Carolina without visiting the coast.

4. Doubling back to meet up again with I-40, we can follow it to its end in Wilmington. It's only a short drive from there to the border of Brunswick and Columbus counties where our Simmons, Soles, and Mansell relatives lived before they moved to Alabama. I think the best we can hope for there is to get a flavor of the area that our ancestors left in the 1830's.

My cousins and I speculate that the family's efforts to prove Cherokee membership were fruitless because we weren't Cherokee, but Waccamaw. According to the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe website, the Waccamaw tribal homeland lies partially in Columbus County, about 35 miles from Wilmington. Hopefully, we'll have time to visit the area, particularly Lake Waccamaw and the Green Swamp Nature Preserve.

5. Traveling north to meet back up with I-40 will take us to Charlotte. We have no family connection there, but I hear it's a fun city. Maybe we can stop for lunch or dinner on our way back home.

As usual, we'll push it to make the trip in a week, but I think we can do it. If you read this and have suggestions for our trip or more information about sites connected to our ancestors, especially the Powell and Simmons families, please let us know.

The Fowlers

The Fowlers joined my family tree with the marriage of Eliza Helen Fowler to Benjamin Powell on 22 December 1828 in Henry County, Tennessee, at the home of the bride’s father.  Eliza Helen’s parents were William and Mourning (Crudup) Fowler.  William was born 8 February 1779, and Mourning was born 4 February 1781; they married on 22 April 1800.  Her parents were Josiah and Elizabeth (Battle) Crudup of North Carolina.  You will see the names Mourning, Crudup, and Battle again and again in the names of their children and their children’s children.

Eliza Helen was one of twelve children, five sons and seven daughters of William and Mourning Fowler.  Their names were: Joseph, Piety Hester, Crudup Battle, Martha Henderson, Mason T. (a girl), Eliza Helen, Harriet E.C., Roina Broadus, William John, James Elisha (for whose wife and sister-in-law Lydia was named; see post "Aunt Lydia Powell"), Mary Jane, and Calvin Crocker.  All the children were born in North Carolina before William Fowler came to Henry County, Tennessee, near Paris, in 1826.  The only child who stayed in North Carolina to raise his own family was the eldest, Joseph. 

Family of William and Mourning (Crudup) Fowler
from Annals of the Fowler Family

According to *Annals of the Fowler Family, John Fowler came to Virginia from England and patented land in Virginia in 1673 north of the Appomattox River near Petersburg.  By court records we know that John Fowler was dead by 1683.   By 1691 his son Godfrey was of age, and his two brothers being dead, he inherited the estate of his father.  By 1695 he had married Susannah Archer.  Godfrey the First (to differentiate him from his grandson) imported colonists and bought land, greatly adding to that owned by his father John, and died by May 1747.  According to his will, his son Joseph had already received his apportionment of land and had probably already moved to North Carolina.

Map of Fowler lands in Virginia from
Annals of the Fowler Family 

We know that Joseph Fowler was in North Carolina by 1772 and may have been there as early as 1743, when his father’s will was written.  Joseph’s wife was Nancy, and they had twelve children:  Bullard, William Anderson, Susannah, Mary, Godfrey Sr. (my ancestor), Wilmoth, Joseph, Elizabeth, Nancy, Martha, Sally, and Burwell.  Godfrey Sr. married Rahab Cooper, and they had six sons and two daughters:  Nancy, David, Joseph, John, Godfrey Jr., Bullard, William, and Elizabeth.  William, my ancestor, married Mourning Crudup, and his brother Bullard married her sister, Bathsheba. 

I’ve always wondered what possessed the Crudups to give their daughters names so widely differing in propriety: Mourning being such a nice Puritan name and Bathsheba—really?—after the temptress of King David.  As it turns out, Mourning is a family name.  Mourning Crudup was the daughter of Josiah Crudup and his wife Elizabeth Battle.  Josiah’s parents were John and Mourning (Dixon) Crudup.  The name Mourning travels through my family from Mourning Dixon to her granddaughter, Mourning Crudup, to her granddaughter, Mary Mourning Powell, to her granddaughter, who was Cornelia Morning Bell, my grandmother’s sister.  I’ve always wondered if T.J. Bell knew how far back in his family this custom went, or if he was merely naming his daughter Cornelia after his mother.

Besides Crudup, Battle, Archer, Dixon, and Cooper, other surnames associated with the Fowler branch of the family are: Tucker, Wilder, Jackson, Howell, Hunter, Sumner, and Blanchard.  All of these families lived almost exclusively in Virginia and North Carolina, stretching back into the 1600s.

*Annals of the Fowler Family can be read online in its entirety at archive.org. 

Aunt Lydia Powell

Great-great Aunt Lydia, who passed down her “Genealogy of the Powells” to future generations, is a kind of role model for me.  When you’re spending all your spare time surfing ancestry.com and tracking down cemeteries and blogging not knowing if anyone is reading, you sometimes wonder if what you leave behind will mean anything to anybody.  Aunt Lydia, who wrote something that helped me in my search 135 years later, gives me hope that what I’m doing will mean something to future generations.

Lydia Caroline was born 16 January 1849 in Tennessee, the next-to-youngest child of Benjamin and Eliza Helen (Fowler) Powell.  In Lydia’s own words, “I was named for the wife of my uncle James E. Fowler of near Paris, Tenn.; she was Caroline Harris, a sister of the late Senator Isham G. Harris of Tennessee.  Lydia is for his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lydia Harris.” 

1860 Shelby County, TN census
Lydia is listed as Martha L.C. Powell 

Lydia didn’t marry until she was 33—to a 57-year-old man, Elisha Ray, who had been widowed twice.  She apparently used her spinsterhood to good advantage, traveling and writing stories about her adventures for the hometown newspaper.  She carried her writing implements, silver inkwell, and paper in a shagreen (sharkskin) box with gilt trim.  She visited a spa in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she took an oxypathor treatment that she claimed made her look 10 years younger.  (Google it; it’s really interesting.)  She visited a home in Florida that she described as “decorated like a Turkish bashaw’s.”  She visited Wales, where she bought a washstand, highboy, wardrobe, and bed made of mahogany with carved roses and angels, that she left to Aunt Clara in her will.  (Uncle Angus refused to take possession of them, as it would have required that he hire a wagon to fetch them.)   My cousin owns two pictures that Lydia painted—one of a swamp in Florida and one of sheep in Wales. In 1910 Lydia was living in Briscoe County, Texas, with her sister Bennie (Powell) Keeble.  The 1910 census shows her occupation as “Teacher (art.)”

Lydia married Elisha Boykin Ray on 10 May 1882.  He had been married previously to Mary Susan Lake, who died in 1864, and Ann Rebecca Wright, who died in 1872.  Years ago, my cousin showed me a photograph of Elisha Ray with Lydia (she thought) and his two young children.  She seemed to remember that Elisha had a boy and a girl from his previous marriage, and that the boy had died young.  I posted the photo on ancestry.com and then received a message from a Wright researcher who found the photo through a search for Elijah Ray, who had married her great-grandfather’s sister, Ann Rebecca Wright.  According to her, Elisha had at least five children with his first wife; he and Rebecca never had children, but she helped him raise the children from his first marriage.  His children, the youngest of whom was born in 1862, would have been grown when he and Lydia married in 1882.  The woman I corresponded with feels that the following photograph depicts Elijah with her ancestor, Rebecca Wright, and two of his young children.  I hold out the hope that it is somehow Lydia, since I have no other picture of her. 

After I had begun to research the Powells and the Fowlers, I found a book in the library of the Oklahoma Historical Society called Annals of the Fowler Family (more about it in the next post.)  It was published in 1901, and the author, Glenn Dora Arthur, had corresponded with many of her Fowler cousins, trying to document as many Fowler descendants as she could.  Two of her correspondents were Lydia and Eliza Helen, Lydia’s mother.  Lydia really comes to life in the long and chatty letter that she sent to Mrs. Arthur. 

She addresses Mrs. Arthur as “My Dear Relative,” and then goes on to relate interesting stories of Fowler relatives during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such as this one about Rahab Cooper, wife of Godfrey Fowler, my 5^th great-grandmother:

“She and her children were in the kitchen and she was spinning, when, just as she was drawing out a thread, she glanced up the road and saw the British coming; she hastily raised the trapdoor and bade all the children enter the cellar and keep wonderfully quiet; she then took her babe—my grandfather—and went up in the attic.  The English soldiers entered the home and she could hear them laughing about chasing all the women and children away.  They remained only long enough to eat up a lot of roasted potatoes and drink all the brandy in the house. They then left without discovering either hiding place,”

and this poignant anecdote, maybe not as historically significant, but just as revealing of the times:

“There is a sad romance about the eldest daughter of great-uncle Bullard Fowler; her name was Tillitha.  She never married, although she was engaged three times, but all three terminated disastrously.  In the first instance her intended was thrown by his horse and killed while he was on his way to wed her; the next one sickened and died near the wedding-day; the third went to Holly Springs on business just prior to his marriage, and he died there among strangers. She had suitors afterwards , but she never promised to marry anyone again.”

Mrs. Arthur makes this very Victorian response to Lydia’s letter:

“Some women have a decided fondness for family reminiscences, and I judge that Mrs. Ray has inherited this interesting trait from her very interesting mother, whose letter set me on my quest for ‘our ancestors.’ Women, as a rule, have more time for remembering traits and incidents of different members of the related families. They talk them over as they mingle in the home work; and on rainy days and winter nights something of the dear past is suggested by the snatch of a song, the odor of a flower, or the similarity of the weather, when one begins,--‘It was just such a night as then when’—and immediately everyone listens.”

I would greatly admire Mrs. Arthur as well for her helpful contribution to Fowler history were it not for her occasional cattiness.  I can’t quite forgive her for the unnecessary comment she made about Lydia’s explanation of the origin of her name:

“If there are any discrepancies in these facts I am unable to correct them, as I give them just as they have been given to me.  As a rule women are more prone than men to draw on their imagination when their stock of facts is exhausted, but I have requested facts only in every instance.”

As a genealogist, I can certainly appreciate Mrs. Arthur’s devotion to the facts, but unless our ancestors come to life for us, what is the point of names and dates?  Lydia may have had imagination, but I’m so glad she did, or I would never have heard such interesting stories about my Powell and Fowler ancestors.

The Powells

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.

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.

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. 

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 54^th anniversary of her marriage.  She is buried at Bethesda Cemetery, Burleson, Texas.

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.

1900 Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory census

Grandpa and Grandma Bell

Okay—last branch of my family tree, my mother’s mother’s family.  This research has been some of the most rewarding and interesting of all the genealogical searching I have done.  And while much has been learned, many questions still remain—and a couple of brick walls that I’m still working at breaking down.

Thomas J. & Cornelia Bell
Cora and Clara

My maternal grandmother’s parents were Thomas Jefferson Bell and Cornelia Dee (or Orange??) Roberts.  T.J. Bell was born in 1871 in Mississippi, probably in Early Grove, Marshall County, where he was living on the 1880 census. Sometime before 1893 he moved to Woodford, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, where he married Mrs. Cornelia (Roberts) Spurlock on 15 October 1893.  I have never found the marriage recorded, but my cousin gave me a copy of the original marriage license, which she possesses. 

Marriage license of Thomas J.
Bell & Mrs. Cornelia Spurlock 

Thomas J. Bell’s father and mother were James W. Bell and Mary Mourning Powell.  They married on 4 December 1866 in Marshall County, Mississippi.  Apparently, the Powells moved to Mississippi from Tennessee not long after the 1860 census was taken, taking for clues the marriage dates and places of Mary M. Powell and her siblings.

James W. Bell (1841-1883) was the son of Thomas Bell and his wife Elizabeth.  Thomas was born in 1806 in North Carolina, married Elizabeth about 1830, lived in Marshall County, Mississippi, and his occupation was listed as Mill Wright on the 1860 census.  That’s really all I know about him.  James was the youngest child and the only boy; his sisters were Catharine F. (married Swan), Mary J.R. (married Baldwin), Elizabeth G., Martha, and Winifred (married Losee).    

In 1883 James W. Bell died, and by 1894 or 1895, Polly remarried.  In 1900 she was widowed again and living in Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, along with Thomas’s siblings, William, Russell, Joseph, and Kitty (Elizabeth.) In 1900 Thomas’s remaining brother, Benjamin Franklin Bell, was living in Chickasaw Nation with his wife, Martha E. (Mattie) Ming.  (Yes, my Ming family.  Another convoluted relationship. Mattie is sister to Cynthia Ming, my Wheat great-grandmother.)  In 1880 the family of James and Polly Bell was in Mississippi, and by 1900 they were all in Oklahoma.

Cornelia Roberts was born on 4 February 1865 in Granville, Jackson County, Tennessee.  I have seen her middle name recorded as Dee in several places, including the baby book filled out by my mother.  Some descendants have recorded her middle name as Orange, which I would think ridiculous except that her headstone reads “Cornelia O. Bell.”  Her parents were Stephen and Elzina (Huff) Roberts. 

  

On the 1870 Jackson County census her siblings were listed as Nancy, Henry, Ellis, Thomas, Caleb, and Nathan.  In 1874 her mother filed for divorce from Stephen Roberts by reason of abandonment.  On the 1880 census the family, consisting of mother Elzina (enumerated as Elmira), Nancy, James H. (Henry), Thomas J., Cornelia, and Nathan J., were living in Harmony, Caldwell County, Kentucky.  I have never found a reason for the move to this area, over 200 miles north of Granville.  Another puzzling thing about these two census entries is that Cornelia is listed as “Permelia,” age 14 on the 1870 census, and as Cornelia, age 13, on the 1880 census. 

Roberts family on 1880 census of
Caldwell County, Kentucky

Apparently, Cornelia married someone named Spurlock sometime before she married T.J. Bell in 1893.  Whether that marriage ended in death or divorce, I have never been able to determine.  There were several Spurlock families in Jackson County, Tennessee, but I have never been able to figure out who Cornelia married.  The Spurlock men of the right age in 1880 appear to still be living in Tennessee in 1900, so how did Cornelia get to Indian Territory?  I did find a grave recorded in Woodford, Indian Territory, for Maggie L.V. Spurlock, born 14 February 1887, died 7 December 1892.  The 1900 census showed that Cornelia had borne 4 children, but only 3 were living.  I have always wondered if Maggie was the child of Cornelia and her Spurlock husband, and whether the child’s death might have caused divorce or abandonment by Mr. Spurlock. 

Maggie L. V. Spurlock headstone
Woodford Cemetery, Carter County, OK
from findagrave.com 

By 1900 Thomas and Cornelia had three children: Clara Elizabeth, age 5; Cora Lee, age 3; and James Alfred, age 1.  Their fourth child, Cornelia Morning, was born in 1903.  According to cousins descended from Cornelia Morning Bell, T.J. Bell owned a store and post office in Mill Creek, Indian Territory.  Oh, my gosh!! Decided to check this out, since I now know where to go to find postmaster appointments on ancestry.com.  Add another name to the list of postmasters in my family—Thomas J. Bell was appointed postmaster of Lester (near Mill Creek) Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, on 15 September 1899. 

Appointment of T. J. Bell as postmaster
Lester, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory 

In 1904 T.J. Bell became a Primitive Baptist minister.  In 1906 the Bell family moved to New Mexico Territory to homestead but a snowstorm forced them to move back home.  In 1908 they moved to Egan, Texas, to live with Thomas’s aunt Lydia Powell Ray, but then moved to Carson, OK, in 1910 to live in a log cabin owned by Cornelia’s brother Nathan.  They built a new house on Middle Creek (Pleasant View) and lived there until 1922.

By all accounts, Thomas J. Bell was the kindest man alive, and Cornelia Bell was the meanest woman.  To be fair, she can’t have had an easy early life, since her father was a drinker that abandoned his family, according to the divorce papers filed by her mother.  Certainly, if Cornelia lost a child at a young age, that had to have taken an emotional toll.  But just look at her photograph as a young girl—she doesn’t look happy even then.  Here’s the story I love to tell:  One of her husband’s Primitive Baptist minister friends came to visit, and she chased them out of the house with a buggy whip!

Cornelia Roberts

In 1922 Thomas filed for divorce from Cornelia, stating that she had ordered him to leave their home, criticized him because of his religious belief, that she was “of a nervous, high-strung temperament, easy to find fault with the plaintiff; continually fault-finding, many times quarreling with him and abusing him and making their home life miserable and making it absolutely impossible for them to maintain a peaceable home.”  They both moved into the nearby town of Dustin, where they lived on the same street.  T.J. owned the Dustin Harness and Shoe Shop and a chicken hatchery.  Until his death in April 1937 he walked by Cornelia’s house every day to check on her.  She died the same year in December, and they are buried next to each other in the Fairview Cemetery in Dustin.