Jerome Timothy Watrous 1818-1904
2010
Jerome Timothy Watrous was born to Timothy Watrous and Mary Rowley in what would become Zanesville, Muskingum County, Ohio. His father Timothy, along with many others, migrated from various places but primarily from Connecticut to Ohio. There, Timothy Watrous bought a large piece of land. Just a few months short of Jerome’s birth, his father Timothy died. His mother Mary was left to care for Jerome’s two older half-brothers who were also his cousins. His father Timothy had first been married to Mabel Rowley, his mother’s sister. After Mabel’s death, his father married Mabel’s sister Mary Rowley and together Timothy, his sons William and Samuel and his new wife Mary made the trek to Ohio.
Jerome’s mother re-married a very prominent man named Dr. Rufus Richardson. Mary Rowley Watrous Richardson gave birth to two daughters, Julia and Olivia. When Jerome was just eight years of age, his mother Mary died. When his step-father re-married Jemima Gittings, she did not want to raise Jerome. He was moved to her brother’s family to be raised. Thus Benjamin Gittings was the person who raised our ancestor Jerome Timothy Watrous.
When Jerome became an adult, he married Olivia Burke Muse in Ohio. They had one daughter named Caroline Malone Watrous. In 1843, Jerome and Olivia in the company of the man who had raised him, Benjamin Gittings, and his step-father Dr. Rufus Richardson left Ohio for Illinois. They settled in the area of what is today Terre Haute, Lomax, and LaHarpe. These towns are about 12 miles from Nauvoo.
Jerome’s wife Olivia died. He then married our direct ancestor Mary June Reynolds in 1844 who raised his daughter Caroline as her own. Jerome and Mary became the parents of three children and one adopted child. They were Lydia Viola who died of cholera at age four, direct ancestor Henry Reynolds Watrous and a daughter Sarah Rebecca Watrous who married Clarence R. Gittings . . . a descendant of the Benjamin Gittings who had raised Jerome.
Jerome was a surveyor, a teacher and a farmer. When his son Henry got his first job as an attorney, Jerome and his family moved with Henry and his wife Glendora to Red Oak, Iowa. When Henry moved on to Utah, Jerome and Mary spent some time in Nebraska before moving back to their home town of Terre Haute in Henderson County, Illinois.
Jerome and Mary adopted a soldier’s orphan named Mary Ellen Byrnes. They raised her as their own and gave her many opportunities for learning music, art and for education.
After the death of his wife Mary, Jerome sometimes lived with his daughter Caroline Moline Watrous Schillinger in Moline, Illinois and sometimes with his daughter Sarah Rebecca Watrous Gittings in her home on the same property where his house had once stood. It was property Jerome had sold to his son-in-law. When he died, his funeral was held in the United Methodist Church in Terre Haute. He is buried in the Terre Haute City Cemetery with many members of his wife’s family. An original marker is over his resting place. Also prominent is a large marker with the surnames Watrous and Reynolds carved into it.
The migration of Jerome Timothy Watrous
Ohio to Illinois to Iowa to Nebraska to Illinois