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Powers Home, 314 Euclid Boulevard

Introduction

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This home was originally built by W. R. Caulkins who was a tri-state district mine owner, real estate developer and Carthage business man. Among the local businesses he owned was the Sho-to-All movie theater located on South Main Street just south of the Carthage courthouse square. After building this home and living in it for a short period, his son A. L. Caulkins moved into the home for a short period, too. The younger Caulkins was the owner of an early car dealership in town. The Powers family purchased the home and moved into it during 1917. In 1918 Dr. Everett Powers left his family to serve in the U. S. Medical Corps at Camp Dodge near Des Moines, Iowa. Various members of the Powers family lived at this location until 1981 when daughter Marian Powers Winchester passed away and left her estate to establish the Powers Museum that was built at 1617 Oak Street (see Clio entry for museum) and opened to the public in 1988. (Private residence - please respect private property.)

Backstory and Context

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Originally as seen in photographs above, the original configuration of the home included a wrap around porch to the east. In the late 1930s the home was modernized with wider clapboards and part of the front porch was removed. 

Dr. Everett Powers and Mrs. Marian Wright Powers acquired the property on three lots when there were very few homes in the neighborhood. The neighborhood was so isolated that Euclid was known as "lovers lane" in the 1910s and 1920s.

Doctor was an early medical specialist in the region (eye, ear, nose and throat) and was often called into the tri-state mining district to tend to lead and zinc miners, as well as local quarrymen, who had been injured at their work sites. He died in 1954.

Marian Wright Powers was a coloratura soprano and traveled throughout the immediate area and the Central Plains to perform her own concerts or assist with traveling orchestras. She died in 1969.

Only daughter Marian Louisa Powers Winchester, born in 1905, graduated Carthage High School in 1923 along with life-long friend Marlin Perkins. She attended Ozark Wesleyan College located a few blocks from this home at 1900 Grand Avenue (see Clio entry for college). Eventually she assisted her father in his medical practice and eventually led the Carthage Red Cross prior to and during World War II. She married Wellington Lafayette Winchester in 1946 and moved from Carthage for a short period before returning to this house to take care of her parents. W. L. (Bill) Winchester died in 1963 and Mrs. Winchester died in 1981. She spent the last ten years of her life making plans for the establishment of the Powers Museum. The museum was opened in 1988.

The original garage outbuilding for this property was sold in the mid-1980s and was relocated by artist Lowell Davis to Red Oak II east of Carthage. The board and batten structure is now incorporated into a larger restaurant facility.


Sources

Hansford, Michele Newton. Images of America: Carthage, Missouri. Charleston SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2000.

Powers Museum Vertical Files: Powers Family, Powers Home.

Additional Information