Power family photograph collection

Born in Ireland, Dr. Edward John Power (d. 1894) and his brother, Samuel Power (1814-1871), both served as civil engineers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He married Matilda Harding of Princess Anne, Somerset County and the couple lived at the property known as "Ringsend," which was located two miles west of the town of Millington on the Chester River near Unicorn Branch in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. The Powers had five children: Esther; Helen (1843-1913); Victorine (1845-1922); Annie (1850-1932); and Edward Samuel (1853-1922).

In 1843, Power received his medical degree from Bowdoin College in Maine and then returned to Queen Anne's County to establish his practice and begin serving the Millington-area as a physician and surgeon. After the death of his first wife, he married Julia Jones of Prince Anne in 1863 and they had two children.

Edward Samuel Power (1853-1922) was a graduate of Bowdoin College, Jefferson Medical School, and the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. A physician and pharmacist in West Philadelphia, he married Emma Johnson (1855-1923) in 1885 under the care of Green Street Monthly Meeting. They had two daughters and lived in Swarthmore, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.





In the 19th century, the Delaware Railroad ran straight down the center of the penninsula known as the Maryland Eastern Shore, from Wilmington, Delaware to Crisfield, Maryland, with branch lines making stops at Centreville, Chestertown, Oxford, Cambridge, Crisfield, Salisbury, Berlin, and Lewes, Delaware. The region was largely agricultural, with colonial estates which were often large, slave-holding plantations. The Sassafras River, a branch of the Chesapeake Bay, borders Kent and Cecil Counties, with its mouth one mile northwest of Betterton, Maryland.

Wissahickon Creek flows from the area near Lansdale in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, approximately 40 miles south to join the Schuylkill River within Fairmont Park in Philadelphia. The river was once the site of many mills, run-off from which contributed to the pollution of the Schuylkill which was a source of drinking water for Philadelphia; 23 mills on the Wissahickon were forced to close in 1869 in an effort to improve the quality of the city's water supply.