William Grattan Tyrone Power, Irish stage actor, comedian, author and theatrical manager known professionally as Tyrone Power, is born in Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, on November 20, 1797. He is an ancestor of actor Tyrone Power and is also referred to as Tyrone Power I.

Power is the son of Tyrone Power, reported to be “a minstrel of sorts,” by his marriage to Maria Maxwell, whose father had been killed while serving in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. His father is related to the Powers who are of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry and to George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford.

The young Power takes to the stage, achieving prominence throughout the world as an actor and manager. He is well known for acting in such Irish-themed plays as Catherine Gore‘s King O’Neil (1835), his own St. Patrick’s Eve (1837), Samuel Lover‘s Rory O’More (1837) and The White Horse of the Peppers (1838), Anna Maria Hall‘s The Groves of Blarney (1838), Eugene Macarthy’s Charles O’Malley (1838), and William Bayle Bernard‘s His Last Legs (1839) and The Irish Attorney (1840). In his discussion of these works, Richard Allen Cave argues that Power, both in his acting as well as his choice of plays, seeks to rehabilitate the Irishman from the derogatory associations with “stage Irishmen.”

Power has a number of notable descendants by his wife Anne, daughter of John Gilbert of the Isle of Wight:

• Sir William James Tyrone Power (1819–1911), Commissary General in Chief of the British Army and briefly Agent-General for New Zealand
• Norah Power, who married Dr. Thomas Guthrie
• Sir Tyrone Guthrie, British theatrical director (1900–1971)
• Maurice Henry Anthony O’Reilly Power (1821–1849), trained as a barrister but later took up acting
• Frederick Augustus Dobbyn Nugent Power (1823–1896), civil engineer, left a large estate of £197,000, equivalent to £15.6 million or 28 million US dollars in 2006
• Clara Elizabeth Murray Power (born 1825)
• Mary Jane Power (born 1827)
• Harold Littledale Power (1833–1901), actor, wine merchant, mine agent & engineer
• Tyrone Power, Sr. (1869–1931), English theatre and silent movie star
• Tyrone Power (1914–1958), American Hollywood star of the 1930s to 1950s
• Romina Power (born 1951), American singer and film actress
• Taryn Power (1953–2020), film actress
• Tyrone Power, Jr. (born 1959), American film actor

Power is said to have purchased the land that is later occupied by Madison Square Garden, New York, shortly before his death. The lawyer who holds the papers can not be found so the Power family is unable to claim right to the property.

Power is lost at sea on March 17, 1841, when the SS President disappears without trace in the North Atlantic shortly after departing for England. Anne Power is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary The Virgin Church in High Halden, Kent, England.