John Wesley Powell Memorial photograph

This memorial to explorer John Wesley Powell is located near the county courthouse in Jackson, Ohio. Completed in 1938, the monument is built of stones donated by the Improved Order of Red Men. The image measures 2.75" x 2.75" (6.99 x 6.99 cm). Powell (1834-1902) was born in New York, but moved to Jackson with his family when he was four years old. He became interested in natural history as a boy and pursued a career in the field, becoming a curator at the Illinois State Natural History Society in 1858. He served in the Civil War, sustaining a serious wound in the Battle of Shiloh that required the amputation of his right forearm. In 1869, he took a team to explore the southwestern United States and became one of the first white men to navigate the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. From 1880 to 1894 Powell served as director of the United States Geological Survey and as director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology from 1880 to 1902. The Improved Order of Red Men is one of the oldest fraternal organizations in the United States. It is supposedly descended from the Sons of Liberty, which during the colonial period worked secretly to achieve independence from England. The Ohio Council was organized in 1853, six years after the national organization, the Great Council of the United States, was founded in Maryland. Freedom, friendship, and charity were its main concerns. Its rituals and terminology were borrowed from American Indians, who were excluded from membership. Prominent members claimed by the order include Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was adopted in 1930 at the DeWitt Clinton Hotel in Columbus