Nelson Powell
Date of birth: 1890
Date of death: 25.2.1917
Area: Ryhill
Regiment: East Lancashire
Family information: Son of John William and Harriet Powell
Service number: 22487
War Service
Nelson joined the 13th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry initially (regimental number 2065) but then he served with the 3rd and subsequently the 6th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment with regimental number 22487. He fought in Mesopotamia where on 25th February 1917 he was killed in action. His effects were left to his father John W Powell. Nelson was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal and is remembered on the Basra Memorial and Ryhill’s War Memorial.
Family Life
Nelson was born in Wrenthorpe in about 1890 to John William (a miner) and his wife Harriet, but by 1891 the family had moved to 13, Smiths Houses, Ryhill. This census revealed that Nelson had two older siblings – Betty born in Wrenthorpe in about 1887 and baptised at St Anne’s on 6th January 1887 and Joe born in Wakefield in about 1889. Ten years later the 1901 census records that the family were now living in St John’s Square, Ryhill but Betty was no longer with them. She was married in Ryhill in 1905. By 1911 Joe and Nelson were both coal miners living with their parents in a two roomed house in St John’s Square, Ryhill.
Basra Memorial
