Bio: George M. Powell, Red River Parish
Source: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago & Nashville, 1890
Submitted by: Gwen Moran-Hernandez
Gherna1154(a)aol.com
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George M. Powell, one of the leading merchants and planters of Red River
Parish, is a native Alabamian, his birth occurring in Bibb County on April
23, 1845. His parents, Charles M. and Sarah (Johnston) Powell, were natives
of North Carolina and Georgia, respectively, were the parents of ten children
(our subject being the seventh), were farmers by occupation, were members of
the Baptist Church, and were honest, honored and law-abiding people. The
father died in the year 1881, but his widow yet survives him at an advanced
age, and resides in Perry County, Ala. George M. was reared to manhood in
his native county, receiving his education at the primitive log school-house
of that day. At the age of twenty-four he began life's battle upon his own
responsibility by farming, and having nothing to commence with, his
subsequent career of success in the direct result of his own energy and
perseverance. Espousing the cause of the South during the sixties, he became
a private in the Eleventh Alabama Infantry (Company F), and was a participant
in the engagements of Richmond, the Wilderness and Petersburg, where he was
wounded in the left side by a minie-ball. By reason of this he was sent to
the hospital at Richmond, and later received a furlough and went home to
visit friends and relatives. At the time of the surrender he was in Georgia,
and form there he came to Mississippi, and a year later to Louisiana, which
State has sense been his home. On January 15, 1871, Miss Silia Marti became
his wife, and to their union seven children have been born: Charles, Mary,
William A., Sarah V., George M., Rosie D. and Walter M. The first two and
the next to the last named are deceased. The mother, who was a member of the
Roman Catholic Church, died on September 25, 1884. Mr. Powell is a member of
the Masonic fraternity, and is a prosperous planter, now owing about 1,000
acres of valuable land, about 400 acres of which are under a good state of
cultivation.