The Methodist Episcopal Church in Hastings, Iowa
2010
When all was said and done, we found much information about our ancestor Jerome Timothy Watrous, his wife Mary June Reynolds and their children Henry, Sarah Rebecca and adopted daughter Mary Ellen Byrnes. The one piece of their later life migration that has eluded us in a reference in Jerome’s obituary to a few years in Hastings, Nebraska. Since we have found nothing to put them in Hastings, Nebraska, we began to wonder the day we visited Red Oak, Iowa. We knew that Jerome and his wife, along with their two unmarried daughters, joined their son Henry Reynolds Watrous and his wife in the town of Red Oak, Iowa. Henry had secured his first job as an attorney. The whole family went along. After three years, Henry and his wife Glendora and their two living sons, determined to move on to Utah where Glendora’s large family now lived. They were involved in the mining business, both as miners and investors. When Henry left Iowa for Utah, his parents went somewhere else before returning to their home of Terre Haute in Henderson County, Illinois. So, when we had visited Red Oak and photographed the place . . . including the Evergreen Cemetery where a little son was laid to rest, we came to the next town. It was Hastings, Iowa. While we didn’t think that Sarah Rebecca Watrous Gittings would make a mistake about something like Hastings in the wrong state, it was hard to miss the fact that it would have been easy to move on down the road rather than across a state.
Then, another person with ties to this family told us that the time Jerome and Mary Watrous spent in Hastings, before they returned to Terre Haute, was connected to their church. The clues were piling up but the conclusions were not forming. We drove into town. It was a beautiful Iowa town. There were no sidewalks. In front of a home were two people in chairs. We stopped the car and got out. They were so gracious. We told them that we wondered if our ancestors had come to their town of Hastings after leaving Red Oak rather than going to Hastings, Nebraska. We told them that in Illinois, Jerome and Mary had affiliated with the Methodist Church. There, across the street from us was the Hastings Methodist Episcopal Church.
There was such kindness from these strangers. The woman took down our names and address. She said that in the morning, when someone was at the church, she would search the records for us to see if our ancestors had been there. We could tell that these strangers, who had pulled up two chairs for us, didn’t want us to go. They found the conversation interesting. It gave them a chance to talk about their town and nearby Red Oak. It was a wonderful hour.
Not long after we got home, a letter arrived from Hastings, Iowa. She was sorry to say that the records of the church did not include our ancestors. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there but they weren’t recorded. Perhaps because they belonged to their congregation in Terre Haute, they did not want to be on the list for a different congregation. Or, we had just gone on a wild goose chase. Either way, the experience was a repeat of many experiences like it. Complete strangers reaching out. Offering to help. Trying to figure things out. The process of putting together a family history would be very difficult if there weren’t angels along the way who are willing to pull up chairs for strangers and go the extra mile.