Col. Robert William Powell (1747-1835)
of Powell, Hopton & Co., Slave Traders, of Charleston, South Carolina
He was a "gentleman of highly polished manners" in partnership with his brother-in-law, John Hopton, and theirs was one of the five largest slave trading firms in South Carolina in the colonial period. As a result of the Revolution (when he raised a regiment of Loyalists), he estimated his losses at £40,000 and was compensated with £10,175. During the British occupation of Charleston he was said to have been very helpful to the American women there, "under the many distressing and mortifying circumstances to which they were but too often exposed in town." He returned to his native country in 1797 when he made a tour of the United States but otherwise lived out the remainder of his life in London, pensioned by the British government.