Obituary Information: John Powers, pioneer resident of Escanaba (Michigan), died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. James McCarthy, in Milwaukee (Wisconsin). He had been seriously ill for some time.
Mr. Powers was born at Mount Mellery, Waterford County, Ireland on June 24, 1844, and spent his early years at Waterford in the south of Ireland. He left Waterford on March 17, 1863, for Liverpool, England, and the next morning embarked for the United States on the sailing vessel Constitution. The voyage took 3 and a half weeks and he landed in New York on April 11. The cross country trip to Milwaukee took four or five days.He visited with relatives in Milwaukee for a time and during the summer went to Chicago where he was employed by what is now the Chicago and North Western Railway. I was during that same year that he first came to Escanaba. When Mr. Powers first came to Michigan he worked in the railroad company's freight office on the old Merchant Dock. This is before the railroad was completed between Escanaba and Negaunee and between Escanaba and Green Bay. He was working in the office when the first locomotive was unloaded from a scow at Escanaba. In 1872 he built a home on Ludington Street where the Kresge store is now. He was married to Ellen Coty, also an Irish immigrant on December 27, 1872, at Neenah, Wisconsin and they came to Escanaba on January 15, 1872, to make their home. Since 1927 he had lived almost continuously in Milwaukee with his daughter (Mary McCarthy)