Sylvia Fletcher Sails to New Orleans

In Newport, Wales a young man, James Powell boarded the Arlington for New Orleans. As he was watching he saw a man and wife board the ship. The man turned back and told four girls to hurry up. James watched as first one lovely girl after another boarded. It was then that he saw her. Sylvia, my Very Great Aunt. She was 22 and her sisters and parents along with a barrel, 19 boxes and trunks were also going to New Orleans. The journey was to take 6 weeks. He was hoping it would take longer. 

Sylvia Fletcher was born in Somerset, England in 1827, baptized at St. John's Church in Yeovil, Somerset on 20 February 1827. 

She had 4 sisters and 2 brothers, her younger brother Henry died at the age of two. On 6 November 1849 her parents,  4 of her sisters and her little brother reached the port of New Orleans in Louisiana. 

By 21 August 1850 the Fletcher family were living in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio.  James Powell had married Sylvia by 1853 they had  4 children and were living in Galena, Jo Daviess County, Illinois in 1860.  There are 6 children in the home, it is 1870  and John, their son, who was born in 1859 is dead and the young family has moved to Dubuque, Iowa. Here is where Sylvia will live the rest of her life. She appears in an 1896 City Directory in Dubuque as a widow living with her daughter Lulu on Bluff Street. In 1899 Sylvia and Lulu live on Iowa Street and in 1900 they are living at 301 Seminary Drive not far from her son Henry in what is now the Seminary Hill Residential Historic District.  In 1907 Lulu marries and moves to Alta Vista St. taking her mother who is now 83 with her. 

Christmas, 25 December 1912 Sylvia passes.