Photo by Judy & Angie
Captain Stephen Powers	Powers Street

Captain Stephen Powers was a thirty-four-year-old New York lawyer who had once served as U.S. consul at Basel, Switzerland. As a legal aide on General Taylor's staff, he had been made a military commissioner in Matamoros. At the war's end, after helping Israel Bigelow set up the legal City of Brownsville and making a brief trip home to New York, Powers in 1849 returned to the delta, established a law firm in Brownsville (together with Franklin Cummings), and became firm as Brownsville's postmaster. His law office (on Elizabeth Street within the same block as the Miller Hotel and the ferry landing) doubled as the post office. He took as his wife Annette, the already widowed daughter of Captain John Butler. Powers would later serve as both county and district judge, customs collector, mayor, state representative, and state senator. He owned much of the land on which San Benito was founded as payment for legal work he did for the heirs of the original land grantees, the Fernandez brothers.