NORTHWESTERN IOWA ITS HISTORY AND TRADITION VOLUME II 1804-1926 H. A. POWERS One of the most successful and best known physicians of northwestern Iowa is Dr. Henry A. Powers, who has practiced his profession in the same office in Emmetsburg, Palo Alto county, for forty-one years. During this period he has risen in the esteem and affection of the people of that locality until today no man in the county stands closer to the hearts of the people than he. Dr. Po wers was born in Dubuque, Iowa, March 15, 1856, and is a son of P. H. and Catherine (Harrigan) Powers, both of whom were natives of Ireland. They were reared and married in that land and directly after their marriage came to America, settling first in Canada, but shortly afterwards coming to the States. After living in various places they finally located on a farm in Buchanan county, Iowa. The father was a cooper by trade and while the boys looked after the farm he worked at his trade. He had charge of the cooper shops in Waterloo, Iowa, during the Civil war, and continued to work at his trade until near the close of his life. Henry A. Powers was reared on the home farm and attended the district school, later graduating from the Jessup high school. He taught school in the winter months for four years and later was employed in the State Insane Hospital at Independence. While there he took up the study of medicine and in the fall of 1879 entered the medical school of the Iowa State University, where he graduated in 1882, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. That same year he engaged in the practice of medicine at Emmetsburg and has remained here continuously to the present time, a period of forty-four years. He possesses to a marked degree the happy faculty of inspiring confidence on the part of his patients and in the sick room his genial presence and his conscious ability to cope successfully with disease have contributed much to the enviable standing which he has long enjoyed. He is also a director of the Farmers Trust & Savings Bank. Dr. Powers has been married twice, first, in 1885, to Miss Anna Roberts, of Emmetsburg, to which union were born two children, namely, Catherine Mildred, who is the wife of W. S. Buckhart, a produce merchant at La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Henry Roberts, physician and surgeon, who is associated with his father and who is referred to in a personal sketch on other pages of this work. The mother of these children died in 1895 and in 1898 Dr. Powers was married to Miss SArah Catherine Lamborn, of Jackson county, Iowa, to which union has been born a son, Harold Wayne, who is now a student in the medical school of Iowa State University. Dr. Powers is a member of Earnest Lodge, No. 399, A. F. & A. M.; and he and his wife are members of the Order of the EAstern Star. The Doctor was made a Mason in 1878. He is a member of the Palo Alto County Medical Society, the Iowa State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. Keenly awake to the welfare of his community, he has always cooperated with his fellow citizens in all efforts to advance the prosperity of the locality and to secure better moral and social conditions. Because of his long and useful career and his splendid personal character, he is deserving of the high place which he holds throughout his community. Debbie Clough Gerischer Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ IAGENWEB: Special History Project: http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm Gerischer Family Web Site: http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/