USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Volume II > Part 16
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Sir Stephen Powell and Captain William Powell, his brothers, came to Vir- ginia in the expedition headed by Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers in 1610. Sir Stephen and Captain William Powell were subscribers to the second charter of the Virginia Company of London.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM POWELL, and Thomas Powell, probably a son or nephew, sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1609, with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers in the ill-fated ship "Sea Adventurer", which was wrecked on the Ber- muda Islands, and whose history written by Strachy and published in London in 1610, was the foundation of Shakespeare's play of "The Tempest". The ship- wrecked crew of the "Sea Adventurer" constructed two small vessels at the Ber-
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mudas from the timbers of the "Sea Adventurer", which they christened the "Patience" and the "Deliverance", with which they arrived at the starving colony of Jamestown in May, 1610, just prior to the arrival of Lord De La Warre, the new Governor, and Captain William Powell represented Jamestown as a burgess in the first Assembly of the Province, called by Sir George Yeardley in April, 1619, and which met at Jamestown, July 30, 1619. This was the first representative assembly ever held on the American continent. After the great massacre Cap- tain William Powell and Sir George Yeardley commanded respectively the two expeditions formed to chastise the savages and an interesting account of this expedition is given in Captain John Smith's "True Relation." He was killed by the Indians on the Chiccahominy river in 1623-4.
THOMAS POWELL, who accompanied Captain William to Virginia, was one of the wrecked crew of the "Sea Adventure", in 1609, an account of his marriage while stranded on the Bermudas, to Elizabeth Persons is given in the annals of the Virginia company of London. He was living at "Dale's Gift" on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 1618, whither he was sent in company with Cap- tain John Pory to make salt for the colony, and is said to have been living in Northampton county, Virginia, as late as 1660. He appeared in the court rec- ords of old Northampton county as early as 1638, when he was charged with Lese Majesty for having declared "that in former times Kyngs went forth to warrs, but this Kynge was fittin only to sit in a lady's lap," referring to King James I, but he was acquitted of the crime. Again in 1654 he made an affidavit relative to the escape of one of his indentured servants, who had run away, where he declares that he is three score years and upwards. In this document he mentions his son, John Powell.
JOHN POWELL, son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Persons) Powell, though mentioned in the records of Northampton county, Virginia, does not again ap- pear, and little is known of him.
WALTER POWELL, supposed to have been a son of John, a grandson of Thomas, of Northampton county, Virginia, was settled in Somerset, Eastern shore of Maryland, in 1668,* He married Elizabeth Beere, whose death oc- curred in 1679. They had six children, mentioned in the will of Walter who died in 1695.
WILLIAM POWELL, second child and eldest son of Walter and Elizabeth (Beere) Powell, born in Somerset county, Maryland, in 1673, died in 1715. He married Eliza, supposed to have been a Miss Levin, and had among other children named in his will :-
WILLIAM POWELL, who settled in Prince William county, Virginia, and mar- ried Elinor Peyton, daughter of Colonel Valentine Peyton, a justice of the peace and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, who was a great- grandson of Henry Peyton, gentleman, who with his brothers, Colonel Valen- tine and Lawrence Peyton, gentleman, were in the royal army in the civil war in England and fled to Virginia in 1656. Henry Peyton appears of record as of Aquia Creek, Prince William county, Virginia, "gentlemen." The three
*In the land grants to Walter in the Maryland archives, he declares that he had removed from Virginia to inhabit Maryland with his wife and daughter Elizabeth. The Somerset County Records, of Maryland, give the date of the hirths of all his children except Elizabeth and the date of the death of his wife who was buried on his plantation "Greenfields" on Pomoukie river.
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brothers were the sons of Henry Peyton, of Lincoln's Inn, Middlesex county, armiger, a cadet of the baronial house of Peyton of Iselham and Peyton Hall, Cambridge, England, who was tried for treason in 1657, for maintaining his sons in the army against Parliament. That they were of the ancient family of Peytons of Iselham and Peyton Hall, founded by Reginald de Peyton, who died in 1136, appears from the confirmation in "Le Mor's Knights" (p. 239) where Sir Robert Peyton, a son of Henry, had the grant from Sir Jo. Bur- rough, 24 July, 1641, with an alteration of the Peyton arms (Borough Grants, fol. 76). (See Accounts of Daniel, Peyton, Harrison and Powell Families in Heyden's "Virginia Genealogies.")
The arms borne by Henry Peyton under this grant are: "Sable, a cross en- grailed, or, in the first quarter a mullet arg., all within a bordure erm." motto: "Patior, Potior". The bordure constituting the only alteration from the arms borne by the elder branch of the family.
LEVIN POWELL, son of William and Elinor (Peyton) Powell, born in Prince William county, Virginia, in 1737, settled in Loudoun county, Virginia in 1760. He had served prior to attaining his majority as a deputy to his ma- ternal uncle, Colonel Henry Peyton, then sheriff of Prince William county. He was elected in 1774 major of the Loudoun batallion of minute-men, and he was the author of the resolutions adopted by the Loudoun county patriots, in the Committee of Safety, of which he was a member. He was in active service with the Virginia militia in its operations against Lord Dunmore in 1775, and in 1777 was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 16th Virginia regiment, Continental Line, and was with Washington at Valley Forge and Morristown, where his health was so impaired by the hardships he bore that he was forced to resign his commission. Colonel Levin Powell was a member of the Vir- ginia Convention of 1788, which ratified and adopted the Federal constitution. He was a presidential elector in 1796, and in 1799 was elected to the United States Congress as a Federalist and re-elected in 1801. He died at Bedford Springs, Bedford county, Pennsylvania, where he had gone for his health, July 23, 1810.
Colonel Levin Powell married, in 1763, Sarah Harrison, daughter of Col- onel Burr Harrison, of "Chippawamsic", Prince William county, Virginia, a justice of the peace and member of the House of Burgesses from Prince Will- iam county, where his great-grandfather, Burr Harrison, had settled, in 1655, having fled from England, a refugee from the royal army to escape the ven- geance of Cromwell. Burr Harrison, of Chippawamsic, was a son of Cuthbert Harrison, Esqr., of Acaster, Caton and Flaxby, in com. Ebar (Arms: "Az. three demi lions ramp. or." Crest: "A demi lion ramp. or. holding a laurel branch, vert.") and his wife, a daughter of Lord Hangdale, of Holme, and was baptized in the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminister, December 28, 1637. While a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in April, 1699, he, with Mr. Giles Vauderville, was sent as an Ambassador to the Piscataway Indians. His name appears, July 10, 1700, with those of John Washington, Rice Hooe, George Mason, etc., of his Majesty's Officers both Civil and Military, to a peti- tion to Governor Sir Henry Nicholson for protection against the Indians. (C. P. 1, 631-Id. 70). Cuthbert and William Harrison Powell, two of the sons of
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Levin and Sally ( Harrison) Powell, were, like their father, members of United States Congress.
LEVIN POWELL JR., third son of Colonel Levin and Sally (Harrison) Powell, married in 1797, Susannah Elizabeth Orr, daughter of Hon. John Orr, a mem- ber of the Virginia Assembly, and a signer of Richard Henry Lee's resolu- tions against the Stamp Act in 1766, and his wife Susannah Monroe Grayson, a first cousin to James Monroe, fifth President of the United States, and a sister to Rev. Spence Grayson, of Bellair, and Colonel William Grayson, aide de campe of General Washington, and later one of the first two Senators from Virginia under the new Federal Government. John Orr had come to Virginia in 1750. He was a son of Rev. Alexander Orr, of "Hazelside", Renfrewshire, Scotland, and his wife, Lady Agnes, daughter of Hon. John Dalrymple, Laird of Water- side; and grandson of Rev. Alexander Orr, of Burrowfield, Renfrewshire, an ardent covenanter, who suffered martyrdom for his religious faith, and his wite Lady Barbara Craufurd, of Auchinaines. The Orrs were an ancient family of Renfrewshire, dating back to 1100 A. D., and the Craufurd family was indeed one of the most ancient and highly connected families of the realm, being descended within four generations from King James IV, of Scotland, through at least a dozen separate lines, notably those of Stewart, Eglington, Seton, Lamont, and others (vide. "A Few Old Families" McCall, Glasgow). "General account of Shire of Renfrew," Craufurd and Seton, Glasgow, 1792.
Levin Powell, Jr., died in Kentucky in 1807, leaving four sons.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER POWELL, son of Levin Powell Jr., and his wife, Sus- annah Elizabeth Orr, and father of Maria Antoinette (Powell) Evans, was a lawyer in Leesburg, Loudoun county, Virginia. He married, in 1820, Lucy who came to Virginia in 1740, married Lucy Smith, of Culpeper county, and for many years a member of the General Assembly of Virginia, and his wife Elizabeth Nicholson, daughter of Captain Henry Nicholson, quartermaster of a Virginia brigade in the Revolutionary War, and his wife Sarah Hay, daughter of Hon. Anthony Hay, of Williamsburg, Virginia, a lineal descendant of the family of Hay of the earldom of Erroll, in the Scottish peerage. Hon. Daniel Lee was a son of Dr. John Lee, of Trinity College, Dublin, a native of Ireland, who came to Virginia in 1740, married Lucy Smith, of Culpeper county, and settled at Woodstock, Frederick county, where Daniel was born. Daniel and Elizabeth (Nicholson) Lee had, beside Lucy Peachy (Lee) Powell, Mrs. Hedges, of New Orleans; Mrs. Patrick Henry Cabell; Rev. Henry Lee; Judge George Lee, of the Virginia Court of Appeals, grandfather of Dr. Duncan Lee Despard, Assistant Professor Surgery, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, 1911 ; and Hugh Lee. Esq., of Winchester, Virginia.
William Alexander and Lucy Peachy (Lee) Powell, had beside Maria An- toinette (Powell) Evans, four sons, viz: Colonel Daniel Lee Powell, of Rich- mond ; Rev. John Dalrymple Powell, of Norfolk ; Dr. Alfred H. Powell, of Bal- timore, Maryland ; and Hugh Lee Powell, of Leesburg, Virginia ; and three other daughters, viz: Mrs. Frederick Lloyd, of Missouri; Mrs. Frank F. Jones, of New York; and Mrs. William F. Brooks, of Alexandria, Virginia.
Dr. James and Maria Antoinette (Powell) Evans, had nine children, of whom Powell Evans, the subject of this sketch was the second. The eldest child, Jane Beverly Evans, born June 3, 1866, at Little Rock, Marion county, South Caro-
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lina, is unmarried. She graduated at the Female Institute, Staunton, Virginia; studied art at the Boston Conservatory of Art and Music; at the Corcoran Art School, Washington, D. C., at the New York Art League, and has pursued her studies several years since under the best masters in the city of Rome, devoting herself to portraiture in oils.
William Alexander Evans, the second son, born November 3, 1870, graduated at Hobart College with the degree of A. B. in 1892; received the degree of Bachelor of Laws at the New York City Law School in 1902; and is an attorney at law and journalist in New York City.
Maria Lee Evans, the second daughter, born November 18, 1872, married, in 1897, Hon. Frank B. Gary, of Abbeville, South Carolina, who was a member of the Constitutional Convention of that State in 1895, and of the U. S. Senate from South Carolina, 1908.
Marie Antoinette Evans, the third daughter, born at Mars Bluff, South Caro- lina, December 27, 1874, married Henry Carrington Riely, A. M., LL. B., of Richmond, Virginia, of the law firm of McGuire, Riely and Bryan, son of Hon. John W. Riely, of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
James Daniel Evans, the third son, born at Mars Bluff, South Carolina, De- cember II, 1876, an undergraduate of South Carolina College, class of 1898, received the degree of Bachelor of Laws at the same institution in 1900, and was admitted to the South Carolina bar. He came to Philadelphia and practiced law in that city until 1908, when he returned to his native state and now resides at Florence, Florence county, South Carolina. He is the author of a history of the Evans family, from which most of the data in this sketch is obtained, and is a member of Maxie Gregg Chapter, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and of the University and Southern Clubs of Philadelphia.
Lucy Peachy Evans, the fourth daughter, born at Florence, South Carolina, July 22, 1879, graduated from the Fairmount School, Tennessee, in June, 1899, and married, June 21, 1904, Rev. Caleb B. K. Weed, of East Orange, New Jersey, rector of the Protestant Episcopal parish of Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Thomas Evans, the fourth son, born at Florence, South Carolina, July 16, 1882, received the degrees of A. B. and A. M. at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, and LL. B. at the University of the City of Chicago, and is an attorney at law in Chicago, Illinois.
Llewellyn Stewart Evans, the youngest child, born at Florence, South Caro- lina, March 10, 1887, died May 27, 1888.
POWELL EVANS, eldest son and second child of Dr. James and Maria All- toinette (Powell) Evans, was born at Little Rock, Marion county, South Caro- lina, June 1, 1868. He graduated from Hobart College, Geneva, New York, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in 1888, member of Phi Beta Kappa, Lit- erary and Social Fraternities, and engaged in business as a civil and electrical engineer, which he continues to the present time. He is president and man- ager of the Merchant & Evans Company of Philadelphia, manufacturers of tinplate, and other metals in all lines; and is also president of the International Sprinkler Company. He is much interested in street, passenger and other railways, automobile and good roads work, as well as in fire protection engineering. He is a director of the Merchants' National Bank of
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Philadelphia, and a member of the University, Racquet and Philadel- phia Country Clubs, and of the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution.
He married, November 26, 1898, Julia Estelle Merchant, daughter of Clarke Merchant, Esq., of Philadelphia, and his wife, Sarah Watts, and granddaughter of General Merchant, first cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point from Albany, New York, and a distinguished officer of the United States army, by his wife, a Miss Lovekin, of Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Clarke Merchant, born in the Oglethorpe Barracks, Georgia, where his father was then stationed, entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and graduated there in 1857. He served throughout the Civil War in the United States navy as a commander, under Admiral Porter. He resigned from the navy in 1867 and engaged in business in Philadelphia until his death in May, 1904, having become one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of the city. He was the founder of the firm of Merchant & Co., now the Mer- chant & Evans Company, and president of the Schuylkill Traction Company. He married, in 1863, Sarah Schoenberger Watts, daughter of Henry Miller and Sarah (Schoenberger) Watts, of Philadelphia. Powell and Julia Estelle (Merchant) Evans, have one child, Anita Merchant Evans, born March 20, 1900.
WADDELL-SMITH FAMILY.
RICHARD SMITH, of Troy (now Troy Hills), Hanover township, Morris county, New Jersey, was with some considerable degree of probability not the emigrant ancestor of his line, for the reason that Morris county in general and Hanover township in particular were each settled in the main by families of New England ancestry who came variously by way of Newark, Woodbridge and Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the English settlements on Long Island, and from New England, direct (Tuttle's "Annals of Morris County"). The allied and hereinafter men- tioned families of Dod, Alling, Parritt, Osborn, Howell and Cobb in particular so came. As a rule, one generation at least, and more frequently several, preceded (as residents of this part of New Jersey) those of their pioneering descendants who pushed even beyond the bounds of the Newark settlement made by the Bran- ford colonists, over the "first mountain" and "second mountain" (of the present Oranges), or followed the more circuitous route of the Passaic Valley to what was the first settlement in Morris county, made at Whippany, some time about 1700. (Sherman's "Historic Morristown, New Jersey"). The great influx of settlers between this date and 1738 (when by reason of its population Morris county was first set off as a county separate from Hunterdon, of which it had previously formed a part), makes it idle to speculate whether Richard Smith was born within the confines of what was later Morris county, or whether he removed there with so many others. The former is not at all likely, as the birth of his eldest son in 1720 indicates such an age on his part as to have made its possibility doubtful. Beyond the tradition that he was of Long Island ancestry, as were many of the settlers of Troy and Parsippany, no record is known of his place of birth or parents. The fact that he owned land in Troy or Parsippany as early as 1738 is shown by a recently discovered mortgage deed given by "Samuel Smith of the County of Morris" to "Joseph French of the City and Province of New York," dated July 5, 1764, and recorded Morristown, New Jersey, November 8, 1766, Book A, page 23 of mortgages, which refers to:
"All that Tract of Land situate lying and being in Hanover Township in the County of Morris and Province of New Jersey afsd which was purchased by Richard Smith Father to the Grantor to these Presents, of one George Bowlby by Deed bearing Date the Second Day of October 1738 and by sd Richard Smith possessed until Day of his Death * * * Be- ginning at a post North side Parsipening Brook * * * containing eighty one acres being all that tract of Land whereon the sd Samuel Smith now lives * * * "
This deed of 1738 has not yet (as this copy goes to press) been located, but it is hoped that a search now in progress will establish by documentary evidence that this Richard Smith, of Hanover township, county of Morris, was the Richard Smith born 1695 at Woodbridge, New Jersey, son of Richard Smith, who died there 1711 (Woodbridge Town Records) and whose descent is believed to be from Richard Smith who was of Boston, 1630, and later of Smithtown, Long Island.
In the record of the travels in America in 1780-82 by Marquis De Chastellux,
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one of the members of the French Academy and major-general in the French army serving under Count de Rochambeau, perhaps one of the earliest descriptive printed records of the place of Richard Smith's residence is to be found. Speak- ing particularly of that part of his trip from the Highlands of the Hudson to Morristown, he says :
"One of the villages which forms a little township, bears the beautiful name of Troy. Here the country is more open and continues so to Morristown. I pursued my journey some- times through the woods, at others through well cultivated lands and villages inhabited by Dutch families."
With one noted exception (namely, the Von Beverhoudts, one of the earlier occupants of "Beverwyck," at which Washington was frequently a visitor while spending the winters at Morristown, seven miles distant), there is no record of the occupation of Troy by the Dutch, and as "Beverwyck" was at this time the resi- dence of Abraham Lott (see Mellick's "Story of an Old Farm," p. 475) the Mar- quis must have referred to the considerable Dutch settlements he doubtless passed through farther north. "Parsippany" (in its varied spellings) seems to have been the name applied originally to the territory now comprehended within the bounds of both Troy Hills and Parsippany, and from the earliest settlements in Morris county at Whippany was apparently identified with its present location. When Rev. Hezekiah Smith in 1764 visited Samuel and Benjamin Smith, the two sons of Richard Smith, he records in his diary a visit to Parsippany. Apparently the designation of Troy by that name was not general until after this date.
It seems probable, though we have no proof, that at least Richard Smith's chil- dren were born in New Jersey, since the earliest dated record starts with the birth in 1720 of his eldest son, Samuel. Richard Smith was a considerable landowner in Troy, and by his will, dated Feb. 17, 1763 (Recorded Liber H of Wills, p. 390, Trenton, New Jersey, and in which he refers to himself as of "Hanover County of Morris"), devised his land equally between his two sons, Samuel and Benjamin, with bequests to his "daughter Rachel Person" (Pierson), and to his grandchil- dren, Thomas and Elizabeth Cobb. Firstly, however, he bequeaths one-third of all his movable estate to "Sarah, my dearly beloved wife." He must have died not many months after execution of his will, for we find the latter proven, and the brothers, Samuel and Benjamin, sworn as executors, July 1, 1763.
Richard Smith and Sarah --- , his wife, had:
Samuel, eldest son, b. 1720; m. Hannah Allen, who was b. 1726. He resided at Parsip- pany, N. J., on the site of what was later the Peter Righter place, about one-quarter mile toward Boonton, N. J., from "the Corner" at Parsippany (E. E. Willis, of Power- ville, N. J., a lineal descendant, while surrogate of Morris Co., verified this tradition from the county records), then at Morristown, and later at Boonton, from whence in the fall of 1770, by "Jersey Wagon" drawn by oxen, he and the greater part of his family journeyed to Lake Champlain, to Skenesboro (now the village of Whitehall, N. Y.), on the headwaters, thence by boat to the present limits of the town of Panton, whence after three years and with such of his family as had removed from New Jersey with him, finally to Bridport, Vt. Several of their nine children took a most active part in the Revolution; especially Rhoda, who m. Bethuel Farrand, who was present with his command at Yorktown, and whose own stirring and patriotic deeds are fitly preserved in verse (see "Rhoda Farrand," in "Patriotic Poems of New Jersey"); also Nathan, who was second behind Colonel Ethan Allen in entering Fort Ticonderoga; and Salome, who was among the women and children sent to Skenes- boro by order of Major Carlton in 1778. For further record of the very considerable number of descendants from this branch of the family in the families of Smith, Cobb, Baker, Wilcox, Wines, Baldwin, Haward, Farrand, Grandy, Eldridge and Doty, see "Smith Centennial Memorial," published Rutland, Vt., 1772;
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Rhoda, m. John Cobb (son of Ebenezer Cobb and Mehitable (Robinson) Cobb, of Taunton, Mass., and later of Parsippany, N. J.), who was b. Dec. 17, 1723, and d. 1799; he had a forge at Rockaway, Morris Co., N. J .; for descendants see "The Cobb Family," in J. P. Crayon's "Rockaway Records, Morris Co., N. J." The Cobb records show the marriage as above and Richard Smith's will mentions his grandchildren, Elizabeth and Thomas Cobb. The latter receipted on Jan. 16, 1781, to having "re- ceived of Hiram and Benjamin Smith the full Sum of ten Pounds New York Cur- rency Which money fell to me by the Last Will and testament of my Grandfather Richard Smith deceased which has since fell into the Estate of the Sd Hiram and Benjamin Smith" (Smith papers, Troy Hills, N. J.);
BENJAMIN, b. May 1725 (see following) ;
Rachel, b. Oct. 13, 1735; d. March 22, 1813 (gravestone record, Shelburn, Vt.) ; men- tioned in her father's will as "my daughter Rachel Person," and except for bequests to her mother in lieu of dower and those made to Elizabeth and Thomas Cobb, her niece and nephew respectively, was bequeathed the remainder of his movable estate. She m. Moses Pierson, of Hanover, N. J., March 27, 1754 (see p. 78 et seq of Pierson Genealogy, by Lizzie B. Pierson, Albany, N. Y., 1878).
BENJAMIN SMITH, of Troy (now Troy Hills), New Jersey, born May, 1725, died July 20, 1767 (Smith Family Bible, Troy Hills), was with his elder brother, mentioned in his father's will as "my beloved sons Samuel and Benjamin." The two brothers occupied different farms at the time of their father's death, as ap- pears from the codicil to the will as follows:
"Concerning my two sons, as Samuel has made the place he now lives on much better by cost and labor, I will that he by Benjamin shall be allowed in the division of the land what is right and reasonable, and provided they cannot agree, then to leave it to two or more honest men to decide it for them and further I say not."
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