Clarence Roland Gittings 1848-1907
2010
Clarence Roland Gittings was born in LaHarpe, Hancock County, Illinois to James Gittings and Susannah Thompson. He was the oldest of three children born to his parents. His father had been married once before he married Charles’ mother. His parents moved from Ohio to LaHarpe in 1836. When Clarence grew to adulthood he purchased 200 acres in the town of Terre Haute, a short distance from LaHarpe but in Henderson County. That same year, in 1873, he married Mary Witherspoon. They became the parents of two sons, Frederick and Charles. In 1879 he purchased the 80 acre farm of our direct ancestor Jerome Timothy Watrous. Jerome, his wife Mary and their daughters Sarah Rebecca and Mary Ellen Byrnes, moved to Red Oak, Iowa to be near their son Henry Reynolds Watrous. Henry had married Edith Glendora Pancake the year before and was going to Red Oak for his first job as an attorney.
Clarence was a two-term member of the Illinois House of Representatives and was well regarded. In 1889, his wife Mary died. In 1891 he married Sarah Rebecca Watrous, daughter of Jerome and Mary Reynolds Watrous. They married in St. Louis, Missouri. At the time of their marriage, Rebecca was teaching at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Kansas. Clarence and Rebecca returned to the small town of Terre Haute. For Rebecca, it was a return to her childhood home and the land where she had been raised. It was the land her father had sold to her new husband. Clarence and Rebecca traveled together and especially loved to visit California. Clarence was a Mason, a Knight Templar, a member of the Odd Fellows and affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church where his funeral was held.
Clarence died of cancer in 1907 and was buried in the Terre Haute City Cemetery Henderson County, Illinois. His first wife is buried in The LaHarpe City Cemetery and his second wife Rebecca, is buried in California where she died.