Aaron M. Powell

Aaron M. Powell was born March 26, 1832, in Clinton, New York, the son of Townsend and Catherine Macy Powell. He was a birthright Quaker and the older brother of Elizabeth Macy Powell, who became the first Dean of Women of Swarthmore College. When he was thirteen, the family moved to Macy homestead in Ghent, New York, and Powell as a young man became active in the anti-slavery movement. He was an editor of the National Temperance Advocate and the National Anti-Slavery Stand and a founder of the American Purity Alliance. He married Anna Rice in 1866, and they had one child who died at the sage of four. Powell was a member of Plainfield and Rahway Monthly Meeting (N.J.) at the time of his death on May 13, 1899.