Memories of Ann Elizabeth Powell Hibbard - Episode 1

Mom began to write down her life story on March 30, 1978. In this narrative she refers often of the history her father wrote of the family. I don't have that book. Does anyone else have it? 

Chapter I

My father lived six more years after he wrote the first part of his story and of course we will always regret that he never got back to it. I am only one year younger than he was when he put down his memories so time is running out and I suppose it behoves me to try to sketch in the rest of his life as well as I can from the stories I remember that he told  us. Also I’ll try to tell of my mother’s beginnings and the romantic story of their marriage and life in the exotic orient.

In 1929 when my father was 55 years old we took a summer long trip by automobile from the west coast to Florida, north to New England and back to Oregon in time for me to enter college in Eugene. When we went thru Michigan we stopped outside of Lansing. The memory my father had of his birth place was so vivid he was sure that he could drive right up to the farm even tho’ he was only 3.5 when he left. Of course the country was so changed that he wasn’t able to but when we stopped to ask if anyone knew where the old Powell farm was we were directed to an old timer who did know. In fact he owned the farm and we were there. We found a rather small log building behind the barn that was being used to store corn and my father decided that must be the house he was born in and I took a picture of it.

On that same trip we stopped in Ohio and visited the two cousins that he mentions. As I remember them they were both a number of years older than my father and unmarried. The brother had exactly the same name as my father Arthur Birdsey Powell. I don’t remember the sister’s name or whether she was widowed or a maiden lady. All I can remember is a beautiful handmade spool bed frame that still had the rope springs that had been brought to Ohio from connecticut and for which she had been offered hundreds of dollars (now of course it would probably be worth thousands).