CHAPTER I DESCENT AND EARLY LIFE ILLIAM DUMMER POWELL, the fifth Chief Justice of . Upper Canada, came of an old Welsh family, Ap Howel, which had its seat in Caer Howell in Montgomeryshire, Wales. A branch of the family emigrated to the adjoining County of Salop or Shropshire in England and was settled there as early as the seventeenth century. After this emigration to England, the name of the English branch was anglicised into its present form, Powell.1 The earliest ancestor to whom reference is made in the family papers is Thomas Powell, who resided at Bank House near Shrewsbury. His son John was born there about 16822a younger son, he sought his fortune in the New World, coming out from England, as Secretary to Lieutenant-Governor William Dummer of Massachusetts. Governor Dummer's father had been a wealthy merchant, a silversmith, in London, the younger son of a good Hampshire family near Southampton.3 He was a Roundhead and an Independent: after the Restoration in 1660, he emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. He had three sons, of whom William was one; Jeremiah, the agent in London of Massachusetts, was another. Jeremiah graduated at Harvard in 1699 and then studied at the University of Utrecht; his "Defence of the New England Charters", written in England in 1728, had great vogue in its day. These two never married, and the third son Samuel died without issue: they had a sister Anne whom John Powell married. His grandson, our William Dummer Powell, thus writes about the marriage: "An anecdote was handed about the Town of Boston: John Powell soon after his arrival in Boston, hearing that this lady was a good match, but a proud Presbyterian who had disdained many offers, laid a bet at his Club, that if he could effect an introduction to the family, he would marry her. He effected his purpose by a compromise arrangement that all the children after the first son should be bred up in the Independent Church. . . . My grandfather was an adventurer of the Cavalier Stock, a man of gayety and CHAPTER I DESCENT AND EARLY LIFE ILLIAM DUMMER POWELL, the fifth Chief Justice of WUpper Canada, came of an old Welsh family, Ap Howel, which had its seat in Caer Howell in Montgomeryshire, Wales. A branch of the family emigrated to the adjoining County of Salop or Shropshire in England and was settled there as early as the seventeenth century. After this emigration to England, the name of the English branch was anglicised into its present form, Powell.1 The earliest ancestor to whom reference is made in the family papers is Thomas Powell, who resided at Bank House near Shrewsbury. His son John was born there about 16822— a younger son, he sought his fortune in the New World, coming out from England, as Secretary to Lieutenant-Governor William Dummer of Massachusetts. Governor Dummer's father had been a wealthy merchant, a silversmith, in London, the younger son of a good Hampshire family near Southampton. He was a Roundhead and an Independent: after the Restoration in 1660, he emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. He had three sons, of whom William was one; Jeremiah, the agent in London of Massachusetts, was another. Jeremiah graduated at Harvard in 1699 and then studied at the University of Utrecht; his "Defence of the New England Charters", written in England in 1728, had great vogue in its day. These two never married, and the third son Samuel died without issue: they had a sister Anne whom John Powell married. His grandson, our William Dummer Powell, thus writes about the marriage: "An anecdote was handed about the Town of Boston: John Powell soon after his arrival in Boston, hearing that this lady was a good match, but a proud Presbyterian who had disdained many offers, laid a bet at his Club, that if he could effect an introduction to the family, he would marry her. He effected his purpose by a compromise arrangement that all the children after the first son should be bred up in the Independent Church. . . . My grandfather was an adventurer of the Cavalier Stock, a man of gayety and |