Writer John Upton Terrell portrayed John Wesley Powell as "The man who rediscovered America." John's father, Joseph Powell, was born in the ancient town of Shrewsburg in 1800. He was of both English and Welsh ancestry. A tailor by trade, he went to London to seek employment. It was here that he became a licensed minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Joseph was married to Mary Dean in 1828. Both Joseph and Mary had dedicated themselves to Methodism, then came to America to build a home and carry the gospel to the inhabitants of the land. The Powells sailed the Atlantic Ocean to New York in 1830. At this time they only had two children, Martha, two years, and Mary, three months. Their worldly goods consisted of a few chests of personal belongings and domestic linens, two dozen books and a small sum of money.

When they arrived in New York, they found the city full of epidemic fever, therefore they moved on to Albany. From Albany by means of the Erie Canal they moved to Utica, where other families from England and Wales had settled; then from Utica, to Palmyra, where a son, Fletcher, was born in 1832. He died in infancy.

Shortly thereafter, the Powells moved to Mount Morris, N.Y. where Joseph preached, did some tailoring and a little farming. On March 24, 1834, a second son was born and his parents named him John Wesley, hoping he would follow them in the ministry. In 1836, another son, William, was born.

Joseph Powell moved his family across New York via the Erie Canal and then on to Ohio. He decided on Jackson County, Ohio because of the Welsh communities there. In the late spring of 1838, the Powells went to Buffalo and from there by steamship to Cleveland; then by means of canal boat down to Chillicothe. Here Joseph purchased a wagon and two horses.

The Powell family approached the farms around Jackson by sundown. They slept in the wagon that night and the next day entered the village. Preacher Powell drove his team of horses up the steep hill to the center of town. It was said that Welsh faces and Welsh accents greeted the newest arrivals in Jackson.

The family got off the wagon to stretch their limbs. Joseph Powell, holding young John Wesley by the hand, went to the Courthouse to inquire about a local land office. They met a kindly man named George Crookham there who invited the family to his home. Because they did not wish to impose on Mr. Crookham's hospitality, the family slept in their wagon on his farm, refusing the invitation to sleep in his house.

Joseph Powell purchased a lot on Main Street for $200. Kindly neighbors helped him raise a temporary log cabin and a frame house was built before winter set in.

The years in Jackson were said to be stormy ones for the Powells. Anti-slavery sympathizers struggled with the pro-slavery elements and Joseph Powell had taken his stand among the abolitionists. Bitterness increased to the extent among neighbors that it was no longer safe to send John to the public school.

In the spring of 1843, a group of adults stood and watched some boys torment John Wesley Powell on Main Street in Jackson. Both John and his brother William were stoned by the other children, and some of the adults cheered it on, while others protested.

George Crookham supervised John Wesley Powell's schooling for the rest of the time spent in Jackson. Mr. Crookham was a self-educated man. He had acquired a notable library and had become an accomplished naturalist. He tutored without charge, any young man who wished to improve himself.

For four years John and Mr. Crookham were seldom separated. The schoolmaster was delighted with the boy's eagerness to learn, to absorb, to understand. Crookham was especially elated when he discovered that natural history and scientific studies held the greatest interest and appeal to John.

At the height of the anti-slavery agitation, a mob burned Crookham's school and laboratory, destroying his collections, books and manuscripts including a history of Jackson County from his early salt boiling days. It has been said the influence of George Crookham on John Wesley Powell's life cannot be over estimated.

In 1846, the Powells sold their properties and moved to Wisconsin. It was especially painful to Mary Powell to leave behind the small piano, bought the previous year. Many evenings after the day's labors and lessons were completed, she accompanied her children in singing of country ballads and hymns she had taught them. Priority over the piano was given to sacks of seed grain, tables, chairs, beds and farm implements.

The townspeople soon forgot the Powell family. Not until John Wesley Powell, a one-armed geologist, electrified the world with his daring exploration of the Colorado River in 1869, did people of Jackson recall their former fellow citizens.

John Wesley returned to Chillicothe and Cincinnati in later years to lecture, but it is said that he never visited in Jackson.

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Courtesy of historian Jack Rhea