    The community was startled shortly after the noon hour Sunday by the announcement of the sudden death of Hon. Nathan Powell, at his hill-top home of apoplexy. There had been no intimation of his illness, and indeed he had not been sufficiently indisposed to have a physician. He was last in the city on Tuesday night, when he contracted a cold, which ledhim to remark on Wednesday that he believed he had the grip, and he remained in-doors at his hilltop home the remainder of the week. Mrs. Powell who had been away on a visit, returned Saturday night.
    On Sunday, Mr. Powell was still ailing, but apparently not seriously. At noon he was lying down in his room, when he said to Mrs. Powell that he would like a glass of milk. Leaving him for a moment she returned with the milk and offered it to him, but he made no response, and she was horrified to find that he was dead. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, his spirit had passed from this life to the eternal world. The end was without a murmer, without a struggle. The mysterious change had evidnetly come as sweet repose follows weariness and suffering.
    Nathan Powell was the youngest son of the late Captain Nathan Powell, and a brother of William H., Edward E., Frank L., and the late Louis Powell. His sisters were Mrs. Mary Graham and Mrs. John P. Ernst. He was born in Madison and would have been forty year old on Wednesday next, March 1st. He was a Mason, an Elk and a member of the First Presbyterian church of this city. He was graduated from Hanover College and later from Harvard Law School. Thirteen years ago he was happily married to Miss Susan Pendleton, daughter of Mr. Elliott Pendleton, of Cincinnati. The children are two daughters Emily, aged eleven years and Natalie, aged seven.
    Mr. Powell was of magnificent physic, an educated and cultivated gentleman of unusual polish and refinement. He had spent much time in travel in the Old World. As indicitative of his great personal popularity, a few years ago, when the Republican nominee for Congressional honors, he ran several votes ahead of his party ticket in his home county, and could have received the unanimous support of his party at any time for any position he desired. Madison Courier

Nathan Powell by M.C. Garber in the Madison Courier
    Two men have borne this honored name in this community - father and son. To one it was given to live a long life of unsurpassed usefullness and kindliness, leaving a memory which is not only the richest legacy bequeathed to his devoted family, but which, is, has been, and will continue to be a source of strength and pride to all who knew him personally or by reputation. The good that men do lives after them; lives in the character and quality transmitted to their children, and, in a larger way in a beneficent and helpful sense, in the community of which they were a part.
    Nathan Powell, Senior, left his impress upon countless minds and hearts unknown in Madison, for his character, for integrity, intelligence and honor assisted in moulding sentiment and conviction among the leading men of many states and corporations, at crucial periods of his country's history.
    His nobility of character is recognized in each and all of his sons, but in no one of whom was his rare urbanity, his sincere kindliness of heart, his rigid uprightness and fine sense of honor more clearly continued and reproduced than in the person of his youngest son, who bore his honored name, and whose sudden and untimely death is universally mourned today.
    Nathan Powell, Junior, was a gentleman in every attribute and characteristic; the soul of honor; cultured, accomplished, genial and brilliant. Life did not set for him stern tasks and rugged duties. To him was vouchsafed leisure and ease, opportunity for the cultivation of scholarly tastes and the pleasures of country life in a beautiful suburban home. He was the center of a circle of devoted friends, of an ideal family and social life.
    To one so well born, so fortunate, so loving. Death comes with the cruelest shock. His friends and family cannot-should not-think of him as dead:
"-in deeper shade a splendid region lies.
and only Death's dread countersign admits the soul that waits
To pass beyond that lusterous host of gleaming sentinals
That move in pickett infinite before the Outer Gates."