Later, in partnership with his father, who had moved to Alabama at the urging of this particular son, he was a successful hotel keeper in the state's capital city, Montgomery.

[2] By 1836, he had moved to Wetumpka in Coosa County, where he became involved in a stage line, which he owned and managed himself and which had contracts for mail delivery in and around the entire state and as far north as Virginia.

When the drill was finished and they were ready to be reviewed by the Governor and his staff, as they rode to the opening for entrance, they were stopped by the guard who demanded the countersign.

[8]On December 20, 1870, Powell and nine other men from in and around the Montgomery area, including a man named Josiah Morris organized a company called the Elyton Land Company for the purpose of "... buying lands and selling lots ... and affecting the building of a city, at or near the town of Elyton, in the County of Jefferson and State of Alabama.

"[9] Powell immediately relocated to the site of the new city and set up an office in a house owned by the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad on the south side of the tracks adjacent to where the historic Union Passenger Depot was built and still stands.

Upon arriving at the location, engineers began surveying the property and laying out the city streets under Powell's direction, and he negotiated with a supplier from Montgomery to make a large quantity of brick available for the building of houses and other uses.

He raised money for and arranged for the building of a hotel, a thirty-room frame structure on Nineteenth Street called the Relay House.