University of Virginia Library

THE POWELL FAMILY.

I have not been able to ascertain any thing very certain concerning
the family of Powells which appears on the records of the
Church in Loudon county. The name of Powell is a very ancient
one on the civil records of Virginia. Cuthbert Powell was contemporary
in Lancaster county with the first John Carter. Indeed, the
name is found on one or more of the earliest lists of adventurers to
Virginia. Colonel Powell, of Loudon,—father of Messrs. Leven,
Burr, Cuthbert, Alfred Powell, and their sisters,—married a near
relative of the Rev. Mr. Harrison, of Dumfries, of whose ancestors
some account, taken from the record of Westminster parish, England,
was given in our sketch of Dettingen parish. Colonel Powell was
once a member of Congress from his district. With his widow I was
acquainted in the earlier years of my ministry. She was one whose
fidelity to the Church no adversity could shake. When all others
were deserting it, she continued steadfast. A minister of another
denomination was once conversing with her on the subject of his
own and her Church, and said that there was but little difference
between them,—that they were like twin-sisters. Whether she
suspected him of some design at proselyting or not, I cannot say,
but she very decidedly replied, "It might be so, but that she
greatly preferred one of the sisters to the other." She was old-fashioned
in all her ways,—in her dress, her home, her furniture,
and domestic occupations. She lived in a plain house, a little back
of the main and indeed only street in Middleburg. On one of my
journeys to Alexandria, while stopping on a summer's afternoon at
that place, I walked over to her abode, and found her busily engaged
at her wheel, spinning tow or flax, on what was called the
small wheel in those days, in contradistinction to that on which
wool and cotton were spun, and which was called the large wheel.

The march of improvement has left both sorts far behind, and with
them much honest, domestic industry and substantial clothing.

One word concerning my old friend, Mr. Lewis Berkeley, of Aldie.
We were school-boys together. He was descended from the old
family of Berkeleys in Middlesex, which lived at Barnelms, on the
Pyankatank, and which was the last to leave the county, after
having been a main prop to the Church for more than one hundred
and fifty years. Mr. Lewis Berkeley married a daughter of Mr.
William Noland, an old member of the Legislature from Loudon, in
days long since passed away. Mr. Noland signalized himself by his
zealous advocacy of the law against duelling. So just and sensible
was his speech on the subject, that it was soon introduced into the
school-books or collection of pieces for school-boys, and still holds
its place. Mr. Berkeley, his excellent wife, and Mr. and Mrs.
Noland, were for a long term of years the pious, consistent, active,
and liberal supporters of the Episcopal Church in Loudon, whether
the services were at Aldie, Middleburg, or even twelve miles off,
at Leesburg, at which latter place they often attended.