The Powells: the family at the center, 1868–1931

1868 – 1931

The city's commissioned history puts one family at the center, in so many words: "Mishawaka citizens were almost exclusively white in the 1860s and 1870s, but a small black community was beginning to grow. At its center was the family of Elijah and Mary Ann Powell." Elijah Powell was born in Owen County, Indiana, in 1841 and migrated to South Bend in 1858. His father, Farrow Powell, became one of the wealthiest Black men in the county and a founding member of South Bend's Black community. Elijah volunteered for the 102nd United States Colored Regiment during the Civil War, saw action primarily in South Carolina in 1864 and 1865, and rose to sergeant, recognized for gallantry, before the war's end.

The move across the river made Mishawaka's first Black household of record: Elijah married Mary Ann Hackley of Niles, Michigan, and the couple moved to Mishawaka with their daughter Medora in 1868. Barbering was Elijah's skilled trade, and he practiced it here for thirty-eight years — the city's first Black business of record, running 1868 to about 1906. The commissioned history records his place in the town's charitable life as well: the barber gave the children of the St. Joseph County Orphans Home free haircuts (the home, opened in July 1882 on Vistula Street, now Lincolnway West, stands whole in this record's charities file). Elijah and Mary Ann eventually had fourteen children, and the history's sentence is the demographic fact of this section: their family "comprised much of Mishawaka's black population for several decades."

The family's memory is kept by its own historian: John Charles Bryant, a descendant of Farrow Powell's family, is the Powell family historian — a griot in the telling of Notre Dame Magazine, which carries his account of Farrow's 1833 migration from North Carolina, after that state's legislature mandated that free Black people leave, to Spencer, Indiana — the Owen County seat, consistent with Elijah's Owen County birth — and later to South Bend. Bryant's scholarship is what the South Bend Tribune's 2003 retrospective on Medora Powell drew on, and it is this community's own scholarship at the strength the record gives it: a family history, kept by the family. (The patriarch's name is spelled "Farrow" in the commissioned history and the South Bend record; the magazine's telling gives "Pharoh." The conflict is printed, not picked.)

Sources

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (city-commissioned) — the Powell passage quoted; Elijah's birth, migration, regiment and rank; the 1868 move; the thirty-eight years of barbering; the fourteen children; the Orphans Home haircuts.
2. Notre Dame Magazine, "The Pillars That Hold Us All Up" — John Charles Bryant as Powell family historian and griot; Farrow ("Pharoh") Powell's 1833 migration from North Carolina to Spencer, Indiana, and later South Bend.
3. South Bend Tribune, "Memorable first; African-American Powell pioneering graduate of MHS" (2003) — the retrospective drawing on Bryant and on the Mishawaka Enterprise.
4. Charities file of this record — the Orphans Home, opened July 1882.