Mary June Reynolds Watrous 1820-1893
2010
Mary June Reynolds was born in Pennsylvania to Henry Reynolds and Sarah Painter. She was the seventh of eleven children born to her parents. Her father Henry was a Quaker. He baptized his daughter Mary June. Her mother was an Episcopalian. When she was still young, her parents migrated from Pennsylvania to Illinois and settled near LaHarpe. It appears that Henry Reynolds did not strictly adhere to his Quaker beliefs. The children may have more closely followed their mother’s beliefs. Her father operated a grist mill and farmed the land. Mary was said to be a self-educated woman who was well read. At the age of fifteen, she began teaching in what was called The Prairie School.
In 1844, Mary married direct ancestor Jerome Timothy Watrous. He had migrated in the company of others from Ohio to Illinois. His young wife died soon after arriving, leaving him with a young daughter to care for. The daughter’s name was Caroline Malone Watrous. Jerome and Mary became the parents of three children and the parents of an adopted daughter. Their first child was Lydia who died of cholera at the age of four. The second was direct ancestor Henry Reynolds Watrous. The third was Sarah Rebecca Watrous Gittings. They also adopted a “soldier’s orphan” named Mary Ellen Byrnes at the age of ten. They raised her as their own and gave her every opportunity for education and enrichment as they gave their natural children.
They lived on a farm in the tiny farming community of Terre Haute in Henderson County, Illinois until the year of 1879. Jerome’s daughter Caroline married Martin Schillinger and moved to Moline, Illinois in Rock Island County. Henry went away to school and became an attorney. In 1879, Jerome and Mary Watrous sold their farm to C.R. Gittings who would later become the husband of their daughter Sarah Rebecca. Jerome, Mary and their daughters moved along with their son Henry and his wife to Red Oak, Iowa in Montgomery County. This was the place of Henry’s first job as an attorney. They stayed in Red Oak for six years. Their daughters Sarah Rebecca and Mary Ellen Byrnes went on to Oberlin, Kansas where they attended school. Henry and his family moved on to Utah. Jerome and Mary went from Iowa to Hastings, Nebraska for three years and then to Oberlin, Kansas for one year. Then, they returned to their home town of Terre Haute, in Henderson County, Illinois.
Mary’s daughter Sarah Rebecca married Clarence Roland Gittings in St. Louis, Missouri. Sarah and Clarence returned to Terre Haute and built a new home on the property Clarence had bought from his new wife’s father years before. Mary Ellen returned home to be married to Joseph Longfellow Hoover in her sister Sarah Rebecca’s new home in 1891. When Jerome and Mary returned to Terre Haute, they found that their two grandsons were coming to visit them. Everest and Earl Watrous were the sons of their son Henry. Henry and his wife Glendora Pancake had divorced in Utah. The visit of two boys with their grandparents lasted two years. It was only when Mary was too ill to care for them, that they were put on a train and returned to their parents in Utah.
Mary was known as a kind and charitable person. Those who knew her said that she was always caring for someone in her home. During her lifetime, she cared for her husband’s daughter Caroline, her adopted daughter Mary Ellen, her own children Lydia, Henry and Rebecca, her brother and nieces. In her illness, she was cared for my her daughter Rebecca in her daughter’s home. The home which was built on the same property where Mary’s home had once stood.
When Mary June Reynolds Watrous died, her funeral was held in the home of her daughter Sarah Rebecca Watrous Gittings. She was buried in the Painter Cemetery but was later moved to The Terre Haute City Cemetery along with her husband, daughter, parents and other members of the Painter-related families. Her obituary tells us that she was a student of the Bible and read it many times. She was a fine teacher and a woman who brought refinement and education to her home and her family. We long to see the face of Mary June Reynolds Watrous but still look for it. We know that she had her portrait taken, but once it left the hands of her daughter Rebecca, it disappeared . . . for now.
The migration of Mary June Reynolds Watrous
Pennsylvania to Illinois to Iowa to Nebraska to Kansas to Illinois