posted by Sandy on Ancestors of Thomas Watrous

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“The Quaker Lovers” by Homer Pyle

Henry Reynolds was born in Delaware in 1786 to James England Reynolds and Hannah Webster.  He was the oldest of eleven children born to his parents.  By 1803 he was living in Pennsylvania where he settled near New Castle and built a grist mill. In 1809 he married Sarah Painter.  They became the parents of eleven children.  Their daughter Mary June Reynolds is our direct ancestor.  She married Jerome Timothy Watrous.  Their son Henry Reynolds Watrous was named for his grandfather Henry.  Henry Reynolds Watrous is our direct ancestor.

In 1836, Henry and Sarah were in Hancock County, Illinois where he built another grist mill on his farm near Crooked Creek.  It was the first grist mill run by water in the northern end of the county.  He sold the mill in 1841 and bought land in LaHarpe, Illinois and went back to farming.  Henry’s wife Sarah died in 1846.  Henry alternated living with his children until his death in 1851.  He was raised as a Quaker but did not remain one.  He affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Henry and his wife Sarah along with all other members of their families who had died in the county prior to 1900 were buried in a family graveyard on the Joesph T. Painter family farm.  Joseph was the brother of ancestor Sarah Painter Reynolds, Henry’s wife.  In 1900, all of the family members who had been buried in the Painter Graveyard were disinterred and moved to the Terre Haute City Cemetery in nearby Henderson County.  At that time, a large Watrous-Reynolds stone was placed to mark the burial place of Jerome Timothy Watrous and his wife Mary June Reynolds and her parents Henry Reynolds and Sarah Painter.

The migration of Henry Reynolds

Delaware to Pennsylvania to Illinois

Tags: delaware, illinois, Painter, Reynolds, Watrous, Webster