JAMES R. POWELL
The presentation of the name of Colonel Powell suggests a turning point in the history of the state. A new era had dawned of which Colonel Powell was an exponent. The long agitation with which the country was rocked for decades, had culminated in bloody conflict which was waged to exhaustion. The turbulence of rehabilitation represented in the struggles of reconstruction had followed, and now the eyes of the people were once more turned to the ways of peace and re-established prosperity. Resources practically immeasurable were untouched in the soils and mountains of a great state, and public thought began to peer into the future with a longing for tranquil prosperity. A class of men represented by the subject of this sketch was in demand, and, as is always true, when the demand exists for men they are to be found. Thus appeared this pioneer at the threshold of a new era.
A native of Brunswick County, Virginia, Mr. Powell, while yet a beardless youth, had ridden the distance from Virginia to Alabama on horseback. This was before Alabama had emerged into statehood. On his faithful horse he reached the straggling village of Montgomery with less than twenty dollars in his pockets. Entering on life in the new region to which he had come, as a mail contractor, he gradually rose to the direction of a line of stage coaches for the transportation of mail and passengers, and with a widening horizon of business tact and comprehensiveness of enterprise for which he was remarkable, he adjusted his stage coach enterprise to a chain of hotels, the most noted of which were located at Montgomery, Lowndesboro and Wetumpka. These interests flourished as the people continued to pour into the new state. As the forests were transmuted into smiling fields, villages, and towns began to emerge into populous centers, and institutions began to flourish. While Powell was instrumental in making new conditions, the conditions were making Powell. A man grows by the means which he creates. While he makes a fortune the fortune makes him. Gifted with an enterprising and constructive mind, Mr. Powell was gradually coming to that stage for which his life was fitting him. The combination of conditions which followed in the wake of the turbulence of years, was one which would arrest the enterprising eye of a man of executive skill, and breadth of vision, which James R. Powell had. Two unfinished lines of railway penetrated the state, in part, one reaching from the Gulf northward, but checked by mountain barriers, the other stretching from the fertile West southward, but halting before the mountains, beyond which was the line with which it was destined to be linked in the creation of one of the greatest arteries of commerce in the South. Between the two, lay a wide barrier of mountain region, in which were embosomed untouched treasures which were destined in their development to excite the interest of the world.
With these resources was associated in the fertile brain of James R. Powell, the picture of a mineral metropolis in the mountains of north Alabama, and in a region where men least dreamed of such a possible creation. He had engineered primitive mail routes, first on horseback, and later by the rumbling coach, and widening the expansion of interest and effort by the establishment of timely hostelries, but here he was destined to crown his unusual career as the builder of a mighty city. Hence, Birmingham.
In the rush and rattle of a great mart, such as Birmingham has become, those of a later generation, who throng its streets of architectural magnificence, and gaze on its piles of splendor, are apt to forget those who laid the foundation stones of the great municipality, and made possible a mighty urban center, destined to eclipse all others of the South in compass and in the number of its people. Men are apt to tread with careless feet over the unmarked graves of the harbingers of that bequeathed to a later generation, forgetful of the brain which contrived and the hand which executed.
It is not the phrase of empty eulogium to speak of James R. Powell as one of the greatest of Alabamians. Unlettered in the schools, he followed the unerring finger of a transparent judgment, and unawed by formidableness of difficulty or vastness of scheme, he planned and wrought, both wisely, and, propelled by a pluck born of the enthusiasm of patience, he succeeded. The career of a man like this in a generation, or even in a century, is a vital inspiration, and far worthier of record more elaborate, than a brief and humble sketch like this.
Incidents in his career illustrative of his native and inherent greatness, are worthy of at least a casual notice not only, but of permanent embalmment in the memories of those who reaped where he sowed. Men like the subject of the present sketch are apt to be thought of as sordid and selfish, while with intensity of spirit and strenuousness of brow, they drive impetuously over obstruction, forgetful of the gentler amenities of life. Oftener, however, than is supposed, there is beneath the intense exterior, hearts of corresponding compass with the sweep of executive activity. There were many instances of gentle and substantial worth woven into the career of Colonel Powell, only one of which is here given.
The record of the severity of the winter of 1863 is phenomenal in meteorological chronicles. The lakes and ponds were covered with a thick stratum of ice. An object of wonder to many, the phenomenon addressed itself to the practical side of the mind of Colonel Powell, who cut large quantities of the ice and carefully stored it away. The manufacture of ice was then practically unknown as a commodity for market, and it was in great demand in the hospitals of the Confederacy. He declined an offer of forty thousand dollars for his store of ice, and presented it to the Confederate army hospital department, for use in Alabama and Georgia. Many acts of generous spirit were his, but they belong to the chronicles of unwritten history.