[3] Her grandmother Isabella Fossett was also a slave and as a child was sold away from Monticello in 1827 as part of a settlement of estate debts, later escaping to Boston.

[5] She gave public piano recitals locally[1] and at least once sang in a quartet in Los Angeles;[6] she was praised by a Bay Area writer as “the bright musical star of her state.”[1] Powell is believed to have been the first African-American artist to exhibit anywhere in California.

[1][7] She apparently began showing her paintings at the age of 14, but her first known public exhibition was at the Mechanics' Institute Fair in San Francisco in 1890.

[2][5] Although her paintings at the fair received "great praise," she was then better recognized as a pianist and is listed in a 1919 history of African-Americans in California solely as a piano teacher.

1890), Bulldogs, Still Life With Fruit (1890), Violets (oil on card, 1890), and a pair of watercolors, one of nasturtiums and the other of tulips, both of which are in the collection of Dunsmuir House in Oakland, California.