Powell01x.htm

In 1874, William married Mary Ann Thomas, a Welsh girl born in Llandaff. The marriage took place in Maryborough, in the gold-mining region of Victoria, and the couple lived in nearby mining town, Timor, where they produced nine children in the following thirteen years. One of those children, Arthur Alexander Powell (#3431), left Victoria for Tasmania, where he married a young widow named Caroline Jane Dent in 1911. The couple had two children of their own and also adopted a third child. These children were the first generation of the Tasmanian Powell family. Eldest child, Malcolm Alexander Powell(#3481) married Joyce Hodgetts in Hobart in 1836 and the youngest of their four children, born in 1951, was Dianne's husband Malcolm.

Another William Powell, also born in Pyle, but some 42 years later, also emigrated to Australia, and also arrived in Melbourne. This William (#38), the brother of our grandmother, Sarah and her sister Maggie, had joined the Merchant Navy in 1900, as a boy apprentice, and was an experienced seaman when he arrived in Australia.

He married Louisa Mary Chessell, granddaughter of the Melbourne shipbuilder Charles Bartholomew Chessell, and the couple lived at first in Melbourne, where their first son, Rhys, was born, and where William worked as a wharf superintendant. At the outbreak of the First Wolrd War, William joined the Royal Australian Navy and served throughout the war, being discharged in Brisbane in 1918. He and Louisa lived in Brisbane for some time and their second son, Owen, was born there, then they returned to Melbourne where William

worked as a stevedore.

In 1922, William started a completely new activity which he was to pursue for nearly twenty years; he set off around Australia as an entrepreneur, buying run-down hotels, grocery stores, newsagents shops, etc., building up the business, then selling them again. During the Second World War, he once again joined the Royal Australian Navy - this time with a commission - and Lieutenant Powell served from June 1941 until August 1944, receiving the War Medal and Australian Service Medal. After the war, he worked in Perth, finally retiring to Freemantle, Western Australia. William died in 1963, aged 79. Louisa outlived him, dying in Sydney at the age of 87.

Their son Rhys Lloyd Powell (#70) followed in his father's wake, we could say, as he, too, joined the Merchant Navy, and his first long sea voyage as a seaman was to South Wales. Then in Newport, he signed on on the "West Wales", registered in Cardiff, for a round voyage to Bahia Blanca in Argentina. Following his discharge from the Merchant Navy, he became a farmer in Victoria, and it was in Cobden, Victoria, that Rhys married Edith Clark in 1935. This and much of the other information contained in the database on this branch of the Powell family, was provided by Rhys and Edith's daughter, my second cousin, Phyllis (Edith Phyllis Faroe, née Powell) now living in Casterton, and by my son Martin, who visited Phyllis and performed research for me in various other parts of Australia in 2002. Phyllis and second husband Stephen Faroe, with son Maurice, at that time were running a 1,900 acre farm, with 5000 sheep, 300 cows and 4 dogs ( "eight if you count Gromit, Shawn, Wilma and Ivy, the pet sheep who think they are dogs" according to Martin). Since then, Maurice tells me, the size of the farm has increased to 2,300 acres, the number of cows has increased t0 600, and Wilma, the sheep who thought she was a dog, has passed on and been replaced by another real dog!