General Notes

Genealogical Records: Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1600-1800s
Colonial & Revolutionary Families, Vol II, Powell Evans, P 775-778-9

Captain Nathaniel Powell, probably the most prominent of the three brother adventurers, came out to Virginia with Captain Newport with the first colonists of Jamestown in 1607 and was the author of the narrative of the discovery of the Chesapeake in Captain John Smith's "True Relation" 1619.  He had been a captain in the Low Countries, and became one of the most renowned of the Jamestown colonists.  He was deputy governor when Sir George Yeardley arrived to take up the government of the colony in 1619, and retained his membership in His Majesty's Council under Yeardley, until he was killed with all his family by the Indians, on his plantation at Powell's Brook, on York River, in the great massacre of Mar 19, 1622.  He left no issue and his estate was distributed, under proceedings in the High Court of Chancery of London, among the children of his eldest brother Sir Thomas Powell, who was knighted at Theobald's in 1624.