Powell Sanctuary
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Benjamin Harrison Powell (1881-1960) was a successful lawyer in the area for fifteen years until he was appointed in 1918 by Governor Hobby as Judge of the 12th District Court and subsequently to the Commission of Appeals in Austin. Marian (Rather) Powell (1881-1974) taught at Huntsville High School and Sam Houston Normal Institute, was a Huntsville School Board member and the Walker County Women Suffrage Chairperson. Following the death of their five-year-old son Rawley Rather Powell (b. 1918) in 1923, Benjamin and Marian wanted to create a place that could help others in times of grief. The Powells purchased 1.86 acres of forested land adjoining Powell Family Cemetery tracts at Oakwood in 1925 and the Walkway, public gathering place and driveway rights for access and gatherings from the cemetery in 1937, with an additional two acres in 1939. This sanctuary features one of the few full-sized American copies of “the Christus,” a world-renowned piece of art by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. The statue of Christ was created from bronze with southern Georgian granite used for the pedestal on which Christ stands. Granite benches were installed for visitors to meditate and read the Sidney Lanier poem, “The Trees and the Master.” As Dr. Harry F. Estill wrote on October 10, 1934, the Christ figure “is a benediction to the citizens of Huntsville and to strangers who in the years to come will gaze upon it, and who will be inspired – as was I – by an overwhelming feeling of reverence and of worship.” Placed within Huntsville’s Oakwood Cemetery, Powell Sanctuary has offered solace to those seeking comfort since 1934.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Powell Sanctuary grew from grief: after Benjamin and Marian Powell lost their five-year-old son in 1923, the couple set out to make a place of comfort for others who mourned. Benjamin was a lawyer and district judge; Marian was a teacher, school board member, and Walker County's women's suffrage chair. Beginning in 1934 they placed within Oakwood Cemetery one of the few full-size American copies of Thorvaldsen's "Christus," with granite benches for meditation — a quiet gift to the town that endures still.
Why it matters
It memorializes both a personal sorrow transformed into public solace and a woman's leadership in the fight for suffrage in small-town Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Benjamin Harrison Powell
- · Marian Rather Powell
- · Rawley Rather Powell
Related events
- · Women's suffrage movement
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sallie E. Gibbs
Huntsville, TX
Raised on a North Carolina plantation and educated at the Greensboro College for Young Ladies, Sallie E. Gibbs came to Texas after the Civil War and married Huntsville merchant Sandford Gibbs in 1866. When he died in 1886, she took the reins of the family firm, spending three decades transforming it into one of East Texas's leading land, timber, and financial enterprises and co-founding Gibbs National Bank in 1890. Her success was mirrored in the grand Queen Anne home she built on this site in 1895.
Houston, Margaret Moffette Lea
Huntsville, TX
Margaret Moffette Lea was a college-educated Alabama woman of nineteen when she married the 46-year-old Sam Houston in 1840, becoming the Republic of Texas's first true First Lady. She steadied the famous general — curbing his drinking and drawing him into the church — while raising eight children and managing the family plantation through his years in the U.S. Senate and the governorship. She endured breast cancer surgery in an era before anesthesia was common, and outlived her husband by four years before dying of yellow fever in 1867.
Margaret V. "Margo" Jones
Livingston, TX
Livingston native Margo Jones became one of the most influential figures in mid-twentieth-century American theatre, championing nonprofit regional theatre and the theatre-in-the-round staging she pioneered in Dallas. She guided the careers of Tennessee Williams and William Inge, directing Broadway productions including The Glass Menagerie and Inherit the Wind, and organized the Houston Community Players. Named one of the nation's outstanding little-theater directors, she died in Dallas in 1955, but her model of resident professional theatre endures.
Forest Hill Cemetery
Livingston, TX
By 1905 Livingston's old city cemetery was full, so residents formed the Forest Hill Cemetery Association in 1906 and bought a hilltop south of downtown, where Arthur B. Garner became the first burial that November. Women organized the Ladies Cemetery Association in 1908 to beautify the grounds, and in the 1930s Marion Tew's stewardship even prompted the paving of Washington Avenue — Livingston's first paved street. Its stones mark thirty Confederate and one Union soldier alongside circus figures and acclaimed theatre director Margaret 'Margo' Jones.