Heather Allen knew a few things about Dr. Frank Powell, La Crosse’s famous mayor in the late 1800s.

After all, Allen works for John Satory, owner of Satori Arts gift shop in downtown La Crosse and the foremost expert on Powell. Satory’s store contains a small exhibit about the flamboyant “Doc” Powell. The exhibit stands a few feet away from the counter where Heather Allen helps customers purchase jewelry and gifts.

So when Allen was rummaging through old documents left behind by her grandfather, she couldn’t help but notice a familiar name that kept appearing in a long-forgotten family mystery.

“Well we have adopted this little girl and have full information regarding her birth,” one of the yellowed letters stated.

“She is the daughter of Dr. Frank Powell by a Norwegian girl named Hanson, who died when the baby was born.”

Chief Medicine Man
With his wide-brimmed Western hats, flowing hair and buckskin suits, Doc Powell was larger than life even by the wide-open standards of the late 1800s.

He remains one of Wisconsin’s most colorful characters.

Much of Powell’s reputation was skillfully fabricated, boosted through popular dime store novels and shameless self-promotion. Yet strip away the myth making and Powell undeniably lived a life more colorful than most people of his day: Surgeon, sharpshooter, speculator, philanthropist, politician, peddler.

Powell was a product of his times, when the lines between fact and fiction, good and bad, right and wrong were often fuzzy at best.

Skilled doctor or snake oil salesman? Frontier adventurer or buckskinned imposter? Statesman or demagogue?

The answer is yes. All of the above.

A formally trained and highly competent physician, Powell excelled at natural remedies learned from his mother, a Seneca Indian. His care among Native Americans earned him the titles Chief Medicine Man and White Beaver, titles he promoted heavily.

Powell opened his La Crosse medical practice in 1881.

“Powell gave the poor food, clothes, treatment, and money before they left his offices,” according to one biographer. “To the large quantity of white European immigrant laborers, Powell’s socialistic tendencies were a welcome relief from the avaricious capitalists they worked for.”

He also financed his practice by peddling elixirs spiked with alcohol, chloroform and opium.

A crack marksman, Powell was the hard drinking “blood brother” of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and toured with Cody’s popular Wild West shows.

“Colonel Cody ought to lasso Powell and place him on exhibition in his side show as the biggest liar God ever let live,” reported the North Platte newspaper.

Seizing upon populist politics of the day as well as his personal standing among residents, Powell was elected La Crosse mayor in 1885.

Small World
Powell’s footprints were left all over La Crosse. His medical offices (promoted as the “Powell Medical and Surgical Institute” by you-know-who) were located at 200 Main Street, a handsome Italianate building standing today and known as Powell Place.

A few doors down is the former sampling room of the Plank Road Brewery, where Powell was known to throw back a few “samples” in his day.

In a string of coincidences, not only does Heather Allen work for John Satory, the local expert on Powell, but Satory’s store at the corner of Pearl and Second Streets is housed in the former Plank Road Brewery sampling room Powell frequented.

“If I hadn’t known who Doc Powell was by working here, it (the adoption) would have just stayed in the letters,” said Allen, who has worked at Satori Arts for about ten years.

Allen’s discovery was made in a bundle of letters handed down through several generations of relatives. The correspondence details the adoption of Helen Olson, Powell’s daughter, by Fred and Carrie Drake. The Drakes called the child Emma.

“He (Powell) said rather than put the child in an orphanage, he would allow Fred to adopt her,” recounts one letter.

Official adoption papers are included in the documents, though Powell’s name does not appear. Another piece of evidence includes a receipt signed by Powell for care of the child.

Long after Powell’s death, as Emma struggled to make ends meet with two children of her own, the letters reveal that family members confronted Carrie Drake about the potential inheritance left behind for Emma.

Emma’s aunt wrote to Carrie Drake in 1929: “If Dr. Powell left any money or property to Emma – his daughter, as he said he would, then it is my opinion and the opinion of others, that you ought to share at least this money or property with her.”

The end?
The hard-bitten reality of politics was a far cry from spinning tales about being a “surgeon scout” in the Old West. It didn’t help that Powell left town for extended periods to tour with Buffalo Bill. While the business of La Crosse waited, “the Cough Cream vendor” was in Milwaukee “doing the town in true cowboy fashion,” including a visit to a “painful place of resort,” chided one newspaper.

But Powell maintained a strong bond with laborers, immigrants and Native Americans and served a total of four terms in the mayor’s office between 1885 and 1897. His Fourth of July picnic of 1885, which he financed himself, drew a crowd of 25,000 people.

Little is known of Powell’s private life. He divorced his first wife and married fifteen year-old Alberta Brockway of Lanesboro, Minnesota, in 1877. The couple did not have any children.

After he wore out his welcome among his political supporters, including his two brothers, Frank Powell was turned out of office in 1897. He sunk his wealth into a Wyoming lumber company and copper mine. Fire destroyed the lumber mills and the mine proved to be worthless.

Powell died of heart failure May 6, 1906.

He had asked that his ashes be spread at Red Butte, Wyoming. According to his biographer, members of the funeral cortege were drunk and didn’t notice his ashes were falling out the mule’s pack. The group finally realized Powell’s ashes already had been spread inadvertently after they reached the summit.

It is believed Powell died penniless. That could explain why Emma Drake apparently never received the substantial inheritance promised at the time of the adoption.

A Wisconsin Magazine of History article summarized Powell best:

"A mixture of hero and villain, it is indeed difficult to measure the stature of this man."

With Heather Allen’s discovery, it doesn’t get any easier.

Interview with Heather Allen, 2008.

Hebberd, Mary Hargrove. “Notes on Dr. David Franklin Powell, Known as ‘White Beaver’”.
Wisconsin Magazine of History.Vol. 36, Issue 3, 1952-53.

Sorg, Eric. Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief -The Life of White Beaver Powell, Buffalo Bills Blood Brother. Eakin Press, 2002.

Schlicht, Clarence L. The Political Career of White Beaver Powell, Mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Seminar paper Wisconsin State University – La Crosse, July 1966.