George James Powell has been a brick wall in my research for a very long time. I've learned a lot about him but have never been able to find his parents. [See my blog entry for him from June 29, 2015]. With my fellow Powell family researcher, Vicki Powell, we discovered that George was buried next to his wife, Mary Ellen Stevens Powell in the church cemetery at Emmanuel Episcopal at Brook Hill in Richmond. However, his gravestone has a different birth year and middle name. No wonder Findagrave was confusing. His stone says: George Littleton Powell, 1821-1866. It had to be the same guy though.
On Tuesday, August 18 we met at the picturesque brick church in Richmond. Marilyn, the church archivist, agreed to show us the church registries from 1860. She had already sent photos of the cemetery records to Vicki so we knew that there were several Powell family plots. There were also Powell families that were not related to us. The plot in which George and Mary Ellen were buried had been purchased by an "Augustus Powell." Only church members could purchase plots.
Before this meeting we played around with some hypotheses about George Powell's father and came up with a promising possibility: Obediah Powell. I even found the name of Obediah's wife and parents. We hoped that we would be able to find these names in the church records to confirm the relationship.
We did not find those names in the church records.
However, we did learn a few exciting new pieces of information. My sister Holly interjected some helpful thoughts as we studied the registries. We were primarily focused on looking for the Powell surname. Holly wondered if the Zaun name was listed in the registry...? That had not occurred to me. Sure enough, there was our whole immigrant Zaun family and their children, getting baptized, confirmed, and married in the church with the Powells! My great grandmother Georgie Zaun was confirmed in 1891 at age 6; my future great grandfather Adam Zaun was confirmed in 1893 at age 14.
According to my records, they got married in D.C. in 1903; Adam was 23, Georgie, 18. (Did they elope?)
As we viewed the record of church rectors, Marilyn pointed to the name of a beloved pastor, Ernest Earle Osgood. Holly made a connection - he was the rector at the church when my grandfather Ernest Earl Zaun was born. Hilariously, we found many congregation members had named children after this man.
There was a Zaun plot at the church cemetery, but the one grave marker was broken and the top missing.
I took many photos of the crumbling pages in the registry books. I also took some beautiful photos in the cemetery. When I got home, I immediately began digesting the information. I posted the cemetery photos on my "Teresa's Family Tree" Facebook page, with captions explaining what we found. I went through the registry photos and marked the names we were looking for.
I listed every Powell and Zaun name from the Index. There were at least 70 names, some of them listed multiple times. Zaun was also spelled other ways: "Zann," "Zoun," "Zound." I have been working on identifying as many of these names as I can.
We were frustrated in locating some of the names in the various parts of the registry. The page number references were incorrect in some cases, and it became clear that this is a more tedious project than we had time for. But we found some helpful listings:
Baptisms:
Powell, Francis Edward 1919
Powell, Warren Douglas 1919
Powell, Bruce Burnell (George Emmett Powell, father)
Powell, Augustus Littleton "
Powell, Grace Elizabeth "
Baptisms: May 11, 1890
Addie Bell (Parents: Jeff M. & M. L. Powell)
Georgie Ella "
Harry Bryan "
Archie Hampton "
Confirmands:
Mr. Jefferson Powell May 17, 1891
Mrs. Jefferson Powell May 17, 1891
John Adam Zaun May 7, 1893
Marriages:
Geo. L. Powell & Sarah Atkinson April 22, 1874
Communicants:
Dr. Junius Powell
John Powell
Mary Ellen Powell May 1, 1898
Stella Powell "
Mrs. Zaun "
Louise Zaun "
J. Adam Zaun "
John Bell Powell July 26, 1896
Burials:
George Powell March 1870
Francis Edwin Powell Oct 1917?
Ruth Osgood Powell Nov 1917?
There are many questions that still stand or that arose from our findings:
Who is George Augustus Powell (nephew of Cora Lee who was the daughter of "Tump")?
What plot did Jefferson Monroe Powell purchase?
Who is the Augustus Powell who purchased plot 62? (He is not buried there)
George Powell was buried in 1870; he died in 1866. Was he moved?
George and Mary Ellen's stones look to be made at the same time; what is the story?
(My hypothesis is that George's remains were moved to the church cemetery in 1870 when the farm was put up for sale... see newspaper listing for Feb. 1870. The grave markers were probably not installed until after Mary Ellen's death in 1901, which is why they match. It also explains why George's gravestone has errors; it had been decades since his death. Note: the whole family was illiterate).
Who is buried in the Zaun plot?
Who is Stella Powell? could it be Josephine Estelle (1880-1903)?
When did the Powell and Zaun families move their membership to Bethlehem Baptist Church on Penick Rd?
