Representative Cuthbert Powell

Cuthbert Powell (March 4, 1775 – May 8, 1849) was a Virginia lawyer and Whig politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and one term as a U.S. Representative from Virginia, like his father, former Congressman Leven Powell. Born in Alexandria, Virginia, he was the son of Sally Harrison Powell and Leven Powell, a planter and merchant based in Loudoun County who volunteered to fight the British at the outset of the American Revolutionary War and subsequently served in the Virginia House of Delegates and the U.S. House of Representatives. Both of Powell’s parents traced their ancestry to the First Families of Virginia, and the family produced several prominent public figures, including his brother Burr Powell, a lawyer in Middleburg whom Cuthbert would later succeed in the Virginia Senate. Raised in this politically active and socially prominent environment, Powell received the private education customary for his class before pursuing the study of law.

In 1799, Powell married Catherine Simms, the daughter of Colonel Charles Simms, a Continental Army officer who, like Powell’s father, returned from military service to practice law in Alexandria and who would serve as that city’s mayor during the War of 1812. The marriage allied Powell with another influential Virginia family and produced a large number of children. Their offspring included Ann Powell Powell (1800–1885), who married her cousin Dr. William Leven Powell; Charles Leven Powell (1804–1896), who later lost two sons serving in the Confederate Army, one at each of the Battles of Manassas; Mary Ellen Powell Adie (1807–1893), who married her cousin Cuthbert Powell and later the Reverend Adie; Cuthbert Harrison Powell (1810–1897); Ellen Douglas Powell Gray (1812–1862), who married William Hill Gray, a two-time member of the Virginia House of Delegates; and Jane Serena Powell Norris (1815–1901). Through these children and their descendants, Powell’s family remained intertwined with Virginia’s legal, political, and ecclesiastical life well into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After his admission to the Virginia bar, Powell established his legal practice in Alexandria, which at that time formed part of the District of Columbia. He quickly became active in local affairs and entered municipal politics. In 1806 he was elected to Alexandria’s city council, and he served as mayor of Alexandria from 1808 to 1809. During this period he also participated in regional economic development efforts; in 1808 he joined a company organized to construct a turnpike connecting Alexandria with the new federal city across the Potomac River. Fellow members of this enterprise included lawyers Edmund J. Lee and Thomas Swann, as well as Jonah Thompson, Charles Alexander, Jacob Hoffman, and John Mandeville, reflecting Powell’s integration into the commercial and professional elite of the region.

Sometime after the death of his father in 1810, Powell relocated from Alexandria to Loudoun County, where he became a planter and farmer, relying on enslaved labor to operate his agricultural holdings. By the 1820 federal census he owned 21 enslaved people in Leesburg, the county seat, 10 of whom were directly engaged in farming. A decade later, the 1830 census recorded him as owning 18 enslaved individuals, and in the final census taken during his lifetime he was listed as the owner of 29 enslaved people. Alongside his agricultural pursuits, Powell held various local offices in Loudoun County, continuing the pattern of civic engagement that had marked his earlier years in Alexandria.

Powell’s state-level political career began in earnest when he succeeded his brother Burr Powell in the Senate of Virginia. He represented his district in that body from 1815 until 1819, participating in the legislative deliberations of the post–War of 1812 era. After a period out of the General Assembly, he returned to state politics and, in 1828, won election to the Virginia House of Delegates. He served a single term in the lower house, extending his experience to both chambers of the state legislature and reinforcing his standing as a seasoned legislator within Virginia’s political hierarchy.

As a member of the Whig Party representing Virginia, Powell advanced to national office when he was elected to the Twenty-seventh Congress. He served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1841, to March 3, 1843. His tenure in Congress coincided with a significant and turbulent period in American politics, encompassing the Whig ascendancy to the presidency, the brief administration of William Henry Harrison, and the subsequent conflicts between President John Tyler and the Whig congressional leadership. During this time, Powell contributed to the legislative process, participating in the democratic governance of the nation and representing the interests of his Virginia constituents in debates over economic policy, federal authority, and other issues that preoccupied the Whig Party and the country at large.

After leaving Congress, Powell remained a respected figure in Loudoun County and within Whig political circles. In 1844 he is believed to have undertaken what may have been his last formal political assignment when he chaired the committee appointed to greet fellow Whig and former President John Quincy Adams during Adams’s visit to Leesburg. This ceremonial role reflected both his continued engagement in public affairs and the regard in which he was held by his party and community.

Cuthbert Powell died on May 8, 1849, at his Llangollen estate in Loudoun County, near the town of Upperville. He was interred in the private cemetery on the estate grounds. Following his death, his widow returned to Alexandria, reestablishing ties with the city where the couple had begun their married life. Powell’s descendants continued to play notable roles in Virginia and beyond. Two of his grandsons, who had emigrated to Illinois but returned to Virginia to join the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, were killed at Manassas, one at each of the two major battles fought there. Another descendant, the Reverend Arthur Powell Gray Sr. (1853–1921)—son of delegate and later Judge William H. Gray and Powell’s daughter Ellen Douglas Powell—or possibly a great-grandson of the same name, both Episcopal priests and graduates of the University of Virginia, helped revitalize around 1908 the Bear Mountain Indian Mission School and its associated mission church. Although the church building later burned in the 1930s, it was rebuilt and the mission continued, extending the Powell family’s influence into religious and educational work among Native communities in the early twentieth century.