posted by Sandy on Ancestors of Thomas Watrous, Stories Within Stories

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You may think that this is just an ordinary painting.  I will tell you why it is not.  This painting hung in my husband’s family home for as long as he could remember.  It was a pale but beautiful watercolor of a woman’s head.  It wasn’t any particular woman, at least not as far as we knew.  It was signed by Stella Gilcrest and was painted in 1918.   In the year 2004, we found The Last Will and Testament for Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous.  She is our direct ancestor.  She left Utah for Kansas, where she spent the last twenty-five years of her life.  She left her two sons behind with her former husband Henry Reynolds Watrous.  In her Will, she told us that she wanted my husband’s grandfather, Everest Elliott Watrous to have one of her prized paintings . . . the watercolor of the woman’s head.  The woman’s head.

Suddenly the painting, which had hung on the walls of more than one home for years and years took on new meaning.  It wasn’t just a painting.  It was Glendora’s painting.  It was originally on the walls of her son Everest’s home.  When he died it hung on the walls of Everest’s son’s home.  When Everest’s son Raymond and his wife died, it came into the hands of  Glendora’s great-grandson.  It is now in our home.

We wrapped it carefully and began the search for the artist.  It turns out that she lived in Wellington, Kansas at the same time as our ancestor Glendora.  So, we knew it was a painting with some connection between person and place. It was a personal painting of some kind.  That is all we know.  Stella died.  If she had posterity we can’t find it. Someone sat for the portrait but it couldn’t have been Glendora.  Glendora was almost sixty when it was painted.  Maybe it was painted from a photograph.  Maybe it is a young Glendora.  Maybe.

This portrait of the woman’s head reminds us that there may be special keepsakes all around us.  Perhaps they are just old familiar things.  Perhaps no one remembers where they came from.   Sometimes they just look like old things.  Worn-out things.  Be careful.

Tags: kansas, paintings, Pancake, utah, Watrous