Powell, a Methodist clergyman, was born in Blue Earth, Minnesota on March 22, 1872, the son of John Walker and Rhoda Gray Powell. His father was also a Mthodist minister. Powell attended Hamline University, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1893, and then from the Boston University school of theology. He served Methodist Episcopal and Congregational churches in Minneapolis and Duluth, but was known better for his educational work. In 1912 he returned to the University of Minnesota to direct the program of religious education. During World War I he directed an educational program for American soldiers in France. After the war he established the extension center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and, later on, continued to lecture at the University of Minnesota on the "Bible as Literature." He retired from teaching in 1940, and died in Minneapolis on August 5, 1953.
Biographical information was taken from the editor's preface to "A Summer in the Big Woods: Boyhood Reminiscences of John Walker Powell," Minnesota History, 35:77-86 (June 1956).
From the guide to the A boy in the eighties, [1922?]., (Minnesota Historical Society)
