POWELL, PETER (?-1837). Peter Powell, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, was an Englishman who moved to Texas from Baltimore, Maryland, possibly as early as 1819, when he and Aylett C. Buckner are thought to have settled on Buckner's Creek in present Fayette County; this was before the official establishment of the Austin colony. In July 1825 a P. Powell wrote Austin, claiming to have improved land in Bay Prairie. Peter Powell was paired with William Kingston as one of the Old Three Hundred families, and the two of them received title to a sitio of land in what is now Matagorda County on May 8, 1827. Powell's land was located on Caney Creek south of the Buckner land. In 1832 Powell was in Buckner's company at the battle of Velasco. In January 1834 Austin wrote from Monterrey, Mexico, to Peter and Joseph Powell, giving the details of his arrest and enjoining the colonists to remain quiet and especially to "harmonise fully with the Mexican part of the population." The Powells were to take Austin's picture to his sister, Emily Austin Perry^qv. Probate records suggest that Powell died in early 1837, when Richard Royster Royall was made administrator of his estate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., Houston: Armstrong, 1986).