Power, Charles Benton, 1868-1953

Thomas C. Power was born in Dubuque, Iowa, May 22, 1829, the son of Irish immigrants, Michael Walsh Power and Catherine McLeer Power. He was raised on the family farm near Dubuque. The eldest of four children, Power worked on the farm while completing basic education courses offered in area schools. In his teens, Power attended Sissinawa Mound College, in Wisconsin, where he studied science and engineering. After three years of college course work, but without graduating, he returned to Iowa and taught in rural schools near Peru, Iowa, during the years 1858-1860. In 1860, Thomas Power accepted a job with a survey party for the federal government and spent the next four years surveying for government and private firms in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and eastern Montana. In 1865, he settled in Nebraska, first working as a carpenter, and, in 1865, he became a minor partner in a wholesale merchandising firm supplying several frontier areas.

This investment, and his familiarity with the West, led him, in the following year, to locate at Fort Benton, Montana, head of navigation on the Upper Missouri. With the stock of goods he brought with him, he opened a general mercantile firm in the spring of 1867. His younger brother, John Walsh Power (1844-1901), followed later that spring with more inventory, and Power's initial company, T. C. Power and Brother, was formed.

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