Lawrence Powell was a son of William I. Powell, a barber, and Ellen “Ella” Wade, a former slave from Winchester, Virginia, who escaped around the age of fourteen through the Underground Railroad to Maine, where she worked as a domestic for a white family, according to great-great-grandchildren who recorded the family history.3 When the Caucasian family from Maine moved to East Milton, Ella went with them. The date and circumstances of how she met her future husband, William Powell, aren’t known, but the two married in Boston in 1874. William was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and made his way to Milton, where in addition to cutting hair he worked as a porter and master craftsman.4 He and Ella lived at 114 Granite Place in a massive white Colonial Revival structure built on a granite foundation. It was a grand house with stately navy blue shutters—a residence not typically associated with a former slave and barber toward the end of Reconstruction. Records from the Massachusetts Historical Commission listed the home in 1876 as the Littlefield/Powell house. Samuel Littlefield was a successful carriage maker and lived in an estate on nearby Milton Hill, in addition to owning a stretch of land on Granite Place that included the grand house where William and Ella lived. The exact relationship between the Powells and the Littlefield family wasn’t officially recorded in real estate records, but given the times, the Powells were likely loyal employees who inherited the house from Littlefield.

After his passing in 1874, Ella and William eventually became the sole owners of the sprawling residence, making them one of the first black families to ever own a house in Milton, let alone on prominent Granite Place, where they were the only black residents and where they remained until their deaths decades later.

The Powells, who had two sons, Albert, born in 1875, and Lawrence, born in 1886, had a favorable reputation within the community. William was known for his talent in architecture and was credited with building a colonial-style home at 102 Granite Place, just a stone’s throw from the main house. Ella and William lived a life that very few African Americans could ever dream of having. William’s considerable confidence and his work ethic were traits that the next generations of Powells would emulate.5

He and Ella, as African Americans originally from the South, had difficult backgrounds, but they assimilated and thrived in Milton. In his obituary from the Milton Record on May 24, 1924, William I. Powell was described as a person “held in high regard by his neighbors and friends who came to know his amiable disposition.” He had been an employee for forty years at Tubular Rivet and Stud Company in nearby Wollaston, where he was also active in Wollaston’s Methodist Church, and he was a member of Milton’s fire department.6