Ancestral Homeland

Joseph M. Powers

Early Days

The old-timers in the family are primarily Celts, likely stirred in with various combinations of Northern Europeans who found their way at one time or another to Ireland, a land with a sufficiently mystical, and for the most part non-scientific, past that it seems to be in vogue in newer age circles. Most ended up in Counties Waterford, Wexford, Cork, and Clare. A largely pagan lifestyle, dominated by the Druids, gave way to the influences of Rome in the fifth century AD. During the ensuing, but probably not consequent, so-called Dark Ages, some have made the somewhat dubious claim that many contemporaries were involved in nothing less than saving civilization. Most of such high-minded work ended in the twelfth century AD, when Dermot MacMurrough, an ancestor of Mom's largely Celtic family, the Kinsellas, invited the Norman chieftan Stongbow and members of Dad's family, the de Paors, to visit, and they stayed on.

Recent Times

Much as described in a recent PBS series, after the potatoes failed thoroughly in the 1840's famine, most of the family, joining the Irish Diaspora, caught a boat west, went through immigration procedures, which may have been similar to those pictured in the recent Scorcese movie, and entered America, where for better and worse, most vestiges of Irish culture have been thoroughly diffused by the lukewarm American semi-melting pot. Most of the family went straightaway to God's Country: Central Illinois. After banging around and on the now defunct Illinois Central Railroad for a short time and formally renouncing allegiance to Queen Victoria in 1860, the Powers family turned their talents to agriculture, mainly growing corn, in what was by that time the Land of Lincoln. Most of the family has grown strong and true in the hospitable greenhouse of DeWitt and McLean Counties, especially around Wapella (named after Chief Wapella), Clinton, and Bloomington. A number of the more recent Powers's spent some time at the University of Illinois in nearby Champaign County.

As in the past, a variety of larger influences, economic and otherwise, have combined to continue the diaspora; so while there remains a large concentration in Central Illinois, the clan is indeed scattered throughout the United States at this time.

This page maintained by J. M. Powers. Send me your inquiries.