BenTha'er-Horizons

Joab Powell

Sesquicentennial Thayer Farm

We did it!!!! I applied for the Farm Bureau's Sesquicentennial Farm status here in Oregon. It was a lot of work and research. Thankfully, there were and are family members who have kept track of Joab and Ann Beeler Powell's history from the mid-1800s from East Tennessee to Missouri and over the Oregon Trail to Oregon. Their 4th child, Peter Powell, brought his wife, Nancy, and the children born by 1852 to settle on a donation land claim of 320 acres. This piece of property has descended to me through Peter to Rachael Arminta Powell Peterson to Goldie Peterson Wolfenbarger to William E. Wolfenbarger then to me. We should receive a sign and certificate plus the award given during a ceremony at the Oregon State Fair. I am so glad that all the work culminated in the family recognition.
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Providence Church and Me

Yesterday, Bob and I went to the last regularly planned Powell-McKinney reunion at the Providence Church between Lacomb and Scio. The church was established by Joab Powell and Ann Peeler Powell along with others in the 1850s. Joab and Ann were my great-great-great grandparents who came over the Oregon Trail from Missouri to settle in Oregon. Joab was a well-known circuit preacher in Oregon.
Bob took a photo of me beside the monument to Joab and the founders of the Church. The stone needs some cleaning to show the inscriptions better. I'm sure they will get there.

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Homespun Missionary

Yesterday, while I was looking for some other books, I located a small volume I inherited title, “Joab Powell, Homespun Missionary”. It was copyrighted in 1935 and gives an overview of his life though the primary focus was really on his influence establishing a Baptist church network in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Uncle Joab as he was called (and he is my great-great-great grandfather) was born July 16, 1799 in the hill country of NE Tennessee. He married Ann Beeler and had 14 children, two who died young. They moved from Tennessee to Missouri, just outside Independence. When the Baptist church in the region went through a division in the early 1850’s, he moved with his family to western Oregon on the Oregon Trail in 1852. The family settled in different parts of the area and even one son near Prineville OR. I am descended from their son, Peter Powell, who had a donation land claim here in Berlin. Uncle Joab was fairly illiterate though had a great memory and with Ann reading scripture, he could memorize passages to share. He established Providence Church which is between here and Scio, Oregon. He and Ann are buried next to the church.

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Joab Powell

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