In 1878, following his marriage to Edith Glendora Pancake, Henry Reynolds Watrous took his first job as an attorney. It was in the town of Red Oak in Montgomery County, Iowa. He moved to Red Oak with his wife Glendora and his family consisting of his parents Jerome and Mary Watrous and his two sisters Sarah Rebecca and Mary Ellen. Ten years had passed from the time this photograph was taken until this family lived here. While conditions had likely improved, it was still a small prairie town. Three of Henry and Glendora’s children were born in Red Oak. Earl, Wayne and Everest. Wayne died in Red Oak and was buried in the only cemetery. In 1884, Henry and Glendora left Red Oak with their two sons Everest and Earl and moved on to Utah. Henry’s extended family went another direction.
This is Mohawk Village in Coshocton County, Ohio as of 2005. It is in this place that we find the site of the original Mohawk Methodist Church and its churchyard burial ground. This cemetery is the final resting place of direct ancestor William Pancake, his wife Mary Crawford and several of their descendants.
William Pancake was born near Harrisburg in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania to Johann George Pfannekuchen and his wife Anna. He was the oldest of seven children born to his parents. His father changed his name to George Pancake and went by that surname from the late 1700s forward. Direct ancestor William was always known by the surname of Pancake. However, some of his siblings retained the original Pfannekuchen name for an undetermined period of time. William migrated with his parents from Pennsylvania to Columbia County, Ohio where his father bought land. In 1818, William married Mary Crawford. They move on from Columbiana County to Coshocton County where they bought land and became the parents of three children. William and his wife were among the founders of the first Methodist Church in their county. It was called the Mohawk Methodist Church and Cemetery. The church is gone but the cemetery remains. In fact, that is where William is buried . . . near the town of Warsaw.
William’s oldest child Jane married and became a mother to two daughters. Upon the birth of her second daughter, Jane Pancake Thompson died. While Jane’s widowed husband re-married, his daughters are often found in records in the home of their grandfather William Pancake. William’s second child was direct ancestor Samuel Crawford Pancake. He was born near Warsaw in 1820. A third child was William.
William and his family suffered much heartache as was often the fate of many early settlers. After the death of his daughter Jane at the age of 24, his son William’s only son Oliver died before the age of two in 1862. He was buried in the churchyard cemetery. In 1864, William’s grandson Stewart, son of his son Samuel, enlisted in the Union Army and left to serve in the Civil War. At the same time, William’s youngest son William was called to serve as well. At the end of their enlistment, in 1865, both William and Stewart Megge Pancake returned home to Warsaw, Ohio. Within a period of only a few weeks, William Crawford Pancake died of the disease he had contracted while fighting in the war. He left behind a wife, Maria and three daughters. He was buried in the Mohawk Cemetery next to his little son Oliver. Two weeks later William’s granddaughter Emma died. She was the daughter of his son Samuel. Emma was only five. Two weeks after that, William’s granddaughter Pauline died. She was also Samuel’s daughter. She was only six.
William Pancake made a Will. Less than two years passed from the time his son and granddaughters died until he, too, died and was buried in the Mohawk Cemetery in the yard of the Church he had helped to build. In his Will he left his estate in the power of his wife to use with some stipulations. His son Samuel was his only surviving child and was the executor. He remembered his oldest granddaughters who were the daughters of his deceased daughter Jane. He remembered his three granddaughters who were the children of his namesake and youngest son William. One third went to his surviving son Samuel.
In 1871, Maria Wilmott Gallagher Pancake died. She was only thirty. She was the widow of William Pancake Junior. She was buried in the same cemetery as her husband and all the other family members who had gone before her. Her children were orphaned but are found in the home of their grandmother Mary Crawford Pancake. Mary Pancake lived until 1880, when she joined her family in the churchyard burial ground.
This is the grave stone of William Pancake in the Mohawk Methodist Churchyard Cemetery in Warsaw, Coshocton County, Ohio. It was photographed for us in 2005 by a stranger, who gave us our first look at our ancestor’s resting place and gave us, for the first time, the names of three children whose names we had not known. They were Oliver, Emma and Pauline Pancake.
The migration of William Pancake.
Pennsylvania to Ohio
There is no face for ancestor Edith Glendora. We have faces for some brothers but only one for her sisters, the face of her mother but not the face of her father. So, we will have to imagine her face.
Edith Glendora Pancake was born in Jefferson Township, Coshocton County, Ohio near the town of Warsaw. She was the seventh child of thirteen born to her parents Samuel Crawford Pancake and Catharine Darling. The families of both parents were pioneers in the area. During her young life she suffered the loss of many family members who lived in the same place. Her two sisters Emma and Pauline Pancake died weeks apart in 1865. They were just five and six. Two weeks before their deaths, her uncle William died from disease he contracted while serving in The Civil War. Three years previous to William’s death, his only son Oliver had died before his second birthday. Two years after the deaths of Emma, Pauline and Uncle William, Glendora’s grandfather William Pancake Senior died. Four years later, William Pancake Junior’s young wife Maria died, leaving three orphaned daughters.
When Glendora grew to adulthood, she had the opportunity to receive an education. She studied for over three years at the Lake Erie Female Seminary which became Holyoke College. While she was in school, her family migrated from Ohio to Illinois where her father and brother-in-law William McVey bought a bank. There, in her parents’ Blandinsville home, Glendora married Henry Reynolds Watrous in 1878. Henry was an attorney several years her senior. The next year Henry and Glendora moved to Red Oak, Iowa where Henry took his first job as an attorney. His parents and sisters came with them. Glendora’s first child was born in Red Oak. His name was Earl Pancake Watrous. A second child was born in Red Oak named Wayne. Wayne died of cholera at the age of six months and was buried in the local Evergreen Cemetery. Henry and Glendora added a third son in 1883. He is our direct ancestor, Everest Elliott Watrous. Shortly after Everest’s birth, Glendora, Henry and their children moved from Iowa to Utah. Glendora’s large family had already migrated from Illinois to Utah. There, some mined, and most invested in the booming mining business. Glendora’s husband Henry shared an office with Glendora’s father Samuel C. Pancake and her brothers Stewart and Jackson. Henry Reynolds Watrous, Glendora’s husband, was their attorney. He, too, invested.
In 1885, Glendora and Henry became the parents of a fourth son. His name was Martin. Martin Watrous lived and died in 1885. He was buried in a plot purchased by his grandfather Samuel Pancake. He lies in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. Henry became a prominent attorney. His name was found almost every day in some form in the local newspapers. In 1891, Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous filed for a divorce from Henry. She cited drunkenness and failure to provide as the reasons. She was granted the divorce and the custody of her two young sons, Earl and Everest. Shortly thereafter, Glendora and Henry put their sons on a train and sent them to visit their paternal grandparents Jerome Timothy Watrous and his wife Mary June Reynolds. They lived in the tiny farming community of Terre Haute in Henderson County, Illinois. This town was very near LaHarpe. It was two years before the boys returned to Utah and to their parents.
Glendora’s ex-husband Henry re-married. His new wife, Clara McGregor was only a few years older than Henry’s son Earl. She would also divorce Henry. In 1895, Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous left Utah for her sister’s home in Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas. There she lived with her sister Camilla and her family consisting of a husband named Charles Everest Elliott and a daughter Katherine. She was listed in the directories and on the census as a widow which she was not. Her visit lasted until her death twenty-five years later in 1920. The name of Glendora’s son Everest Elliott Watrous and the name of her brother-in-law Charles Everest Elliott continues to be a mystery within a mystery.
In 1920, Glendora went to the hospital in nearby Geuda Springs hoping to get well. She did not. She had her nurse pen a last letter to her son Earl, asking him to persuade his brother Everest to write to her. An ambulance was called to take Glendora to St. Lukes’ Hospital in Wellington, where she died. Her casket was carried into the parlor of her sister’s home, where the local Presbyterian minister spoke some last words. She was buried in the Prairie Lawn Cemetery. Years later, her sister Camilla was buried next to her.
Glendora left a Will. Her sister Camilla was the executrix. Glendora left her estate to her with the exception of a few belongings. She left a painting for each of her sons and some silver for her granddaughter Wilma. There is no mention of her three grandsons, the sons of Everest Elliott Watrous, who is our direct ancestor.
The “watercolor of the woman’s head”, which was Willed to Everest from his mother is in our possession as of 2010.
The migration of Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous
Ohio to Illinois to Iowa to Utah to Kansas
It was the obituary for our ancestor William Pancake in 1867 that told us where he was buried. The first Methodist Church in Jefferson Township was built on this spot in Warsaw, Ohio. Our ancestors were among the founding members of the church. Soon, a graveyard was plotted and grew up around the church. By 1880 it held the remains of Jane Pancake Thompson, Emma Pancake, Pauline Pancake, Oliver Pancake, William Crawford Pancake Junior, his wife Maria Wilmott Gallagher, William Pancake Senior and his wife Mary Crawford. The church is gone but the graveyard remains. A stranger kindly took this photograph for us along with the grave stones for all of those previously mentioned.
We are without most of the faces of our ancestors, the Pancake family, who came from Jefferson Township in Coshocton County, Ohio. But, we know that from 1820 until almost 1880, they lived here. Their children were born here and buried here. This wonderful photograph of a funeral procession in Jefferson Township in Coshocton County, Ohio was taken in 1880. 1880 was the year that direct ancestor Mary Crawford Pancake died and was buried in the Mohawk Cemetery in Warsaw, Jefferson Township, Coshocton County, Ohio. It gives us an idea of the culture, the clothing and the towns of this part of the county. It also makes us curious about who was being remembered and buried on this day.
William and Mary Crawford Pancake married in Ohio in 1818. They affiliated with the first of the churches in the area which was Methodist. As this compiled History of Warsaw, Ohio indicates, “Mr. and Mrs. Pancake” were among the first members.
William Pancake Senior and his son William junior and direct ancestor Samuel Crawford Pancake were Masons. All lived their lives primarily in the town of Warsaw, in Coshocton County, Ohio. This Masonic Temple was likely built after the deaths of both Williams but was used by ancestor Samuel Pancake and his son Stewart Megge Pancake. When Samuel Pancake left Ohio for Illinois in the late 1870s, he affiliated with the Masonic Lodge in Blandinsville, Illinois. Later in his life, when Samuel Pancake migrated from Illlinois to Utah with his family, he did not become affiliated with the local Masonic Lodge.
In the middle 1870s, our ancestor Samuel Crawford Pancake and his son-in-law William Franklin McVey bought a bank in the Illinois town of Blandinsville in McDonough County. The Pancake and McVey families moved from Ohio to Blandinsville. Many of the children of Samuel and Catharine Pancake were school age at the time. This school was built in 1868 and thus was just a few years old when these families took up residence here.
Johann Pfannekuchen was born in Prussia. Today it is known as Germany. He emigrated to America where he married and settled in Pennsylvania. He is our direct ancestor. His son Johann George Pannekuchen was the first ancestor in this line to Americanize his name to Pancake. By the time our ancestor William was born in 1793, the family name was officially Pancake.
These are the records of the Hill Church in Pennsylvania. The first Pfannekuchen entry is our direct ancestor. Subsequent descendants of ancestor Johann George Pfannekuchen affiliated with the Methodist Church rather than the Lutheran Church. Thus the descendant line was Johann to Johann George to William to Samuel to Glendora to Everest to Everest Raymond to the present day with three additional living generations.
