There isn’t much to say about little Martin. He was born sometime in 1885 or 1886 according to The Death Book in the sexton’s office in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was buried next to his grandfather Samuel Crawford Pancake and in the company of many others of his extended family who lie in the family plot purchased by Samuel Pancake. His grave remained unmarked until the year 2000 when we found it. Martin’s parents are Henry Reynolds Watrous and Edith Glendora Pancake. He was the youngest child and son of his parents. His oldest brother was Earl, followed by a brother named Wayne who died in Iowa at the age of six months. Next was direct ancestor Everest Elliott Watrous. Only Earl and Everest lived to adulthood and thus have posterity to the present day.
His grave was marked, along with his uncle Marion Darling Pancake and his grandfather Samuel Crawford Pancake by donations from family members. Now, when visitors seek the family plot purchased by Samuel Pancake they will find all graves filled except one and all of the graves marked.
Mary Maria Jenkins was born to Rosella Newberry Morris and John Jenkins in the town of Pleasant Green, Utah. Her father was a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints and her mother the child of recent converts from New England. Mary was the sixth child of seven born to her parents. At the age of sixteen she married Everest Elliott Watrous who was not a member of her church and who had come to Utah as a child with his parents Henry Reynolds Watrous and Edith Glendora Pancake. Mary and Everest spent a lot of time in the mountains of Utah pursuing various mining interests. Mary and Everest were the parents of three sons. They were Mervyn, Wayne and Everest Raymond. The youngest, Everest Raymond Watrous is our direct ancestor.
From all accounts Mary was an interesting person and quite a free spirit. She cooked for dozens of miners at a time and lived in the solitude of the mountains during the summer months. Once her children were old enough for school, the family bought a home in Salt Lake City. Mary had a number of interesting jobs in her short lifetime. She worked for JG McDonald Chocolates, the Hudson Bay Fur Company and as a booking agent for the child prodigy Little Sousa, Raymond Baird.
She spent the last eighteen months of her life at the home of her son Mervyn in California. She died at the age of 44 of various ailments secondary to diabetes. Her body was prepared in California and shipped by rail to Utah. We have found no record of an obituary in the local newspapers or of a funeral although the mortuary who received her body and arranged her burial is still in business and has public records. Mary was buried in The Salt Lake City Cemetery and her grave marked with what appears to be a homemade grave stone. Mary has significant posterity to the present day. All are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints as were her parents and siblings.
The migration of Mary Maria Jenkins Watrous
Utah to Idaho to Utah to California
This wonderful portrait of Pansy and Maude McVey was generously shared with us by Maude’s daughter Mary. Pansy is the older of the two. Pansy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah during the time when her parents and extended family were living there and investing in various mining ventures. It was for these two daughters that William Franklin McVey built two identical white, Victorian homes in 1910 in the city of Fresno, California. When Pansy grew to adulthood she married Fredrick Miller Burke and became the mother of two children. They were Rosalie and Robert. Pansy McVey Burke has posterity to the present day.
The migration of Pansy McVey Burke
Utah to California
Maude McVey was the youngest child of six born to Ophelia Pancake McVey and William Franklin McVey. In 1909 she married Harvey Buteau Mount and became the mother of three daughters; Roberta, Mary Emma and Elizabeth. In about 1910, Maude’s father William built two beautiful Victorian- style homes in Fresno, California for his youngest daughters, Pansy and Maude. Maude outlived her husband by almost twenty years. Her posterity reaches to the present day. Within our Personal Ancestral File we have the complete posterity of Maude McVey and Harvey Mount through their living daughters. Through the generosity of both daughters, who are living, we were able to complete the line of Maude Mcvey including the addition of many photographs.
The migration of Maude McVey Mount
Illinois to Utah to California
Myrnie McVey was the daughter of Ophelia Pancake and William Franklin McVey. She was the second child and second daughter born to her parents. She was one of six children; four girls and two boys. Their names were Grace, Myrnie, Ernest, William, Pansy and Maude. In 1898 Myrnie married Mark Hutchison. They became the parents of two daughters . . . Bernice and Grace. They are pictured here in a photograph shared by the daughter of Bernice Ophelia Hutchison Gale. Myrnie McVey Hutchison has posterity to the present day.
The migration of Myrnie Vail McVey Hutchison
Illinois to Utah to California
Rachel Ann Thompson was the daughter of Jane Pancake and William Thompson. Jane, Rachel’s mother was the daughter of William Pancake and Mary Crawford and the oldest of three children: Jane, Samuel and William Pancake. Thus, Rachel was the first cousin of our ancestor Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous and the niece of Glendora’s father Samuel Pancake. Rachel was the second child and daughter of her parents William and Jane. However, it was as a result of Rachel’s birth that her mother Jane died. Her father William re-married. In 1867, when Rachel’s grandfather died, he remembered her in his Last Will and Testament. In fact, he was concerned about her needs to the point that he instructed his executor, his son Samuel, to pay money to Rachel Ann first. By this time she had married Jason T. Younker, also of Coshocton County, Ohio.
Rachel’s older sister Mary Jane has eluded us. We have, to date, not found a marriage or a death for her. We don’t know if she remained in Ohio or moved to be nearer her only sibling.
Rachel married a very adventurous man. Much is written about Jason Younker including his climb of Pike’s Peak. Rachel went by the name Annie most of her life. She and Jason became the parents of at least five children. She has posterity to the present day.
The migration of Rachel Ann Thompson Younker
Ohio to Colorado to Texas to Colorado
Rosella Ann Pancake was born in Jefferson Township, Coshocton County, Ohio to William and Maria Gallagher Pancake. She was the oldest child and daughter. She had two sisters, Mary Lucinda and Cora. Her little brother Oliver died at the age of two. He was the third child and only son of her parents. In 1865, after serving in the Union Army for a year, her father William returned home to his little family. Only a few weeks later he died from the illness and infection he had contracted while in the war. He had been confined to a military hospital for some time before his obligation of one year was completed. When her grandfather William Pancake Senior died two years later, in 1867, he remembered the children of his deceased son in his Last Will and Testament and named the three little girls by name.
When Rosella grew to adulthood she married William Helman in 1878. They didn’t travel far from her childhood home, but lived in Ohio for the rest of their lives. Rosella and William were the parents of three sons. They were Roy, Charles and William. Rosella has posterity to the present day. She was the niece of our direct ancestor Samuel Crawford Pancake and thus a first cousin of our ancestor Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous.
Her parents and her younger brother are all buried together in the churchyard where the early Methodist Church once stood near the small town of Warsaw, Ohio. The church is gone but the graveyard within its fences remains. Grave stones mark the final resting place of Rosella’s parents, brother and many extended family members.
The migration of Rosella Ann Pancake Helman
Ohio
Rosella was born to goodly parents, George Morris and Hannah Maria Newberry in Nauvoo, Illinois. George was a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints from England and Hannah was from an early New England family who had also joined the Mormon Church. Rosella was the third child and third daughter born to her parents. She eventually was one of 12 children. When she was just two weeks old, her family began the trek across the plains to Utah. Her mother Hannah was ill and had to care for three small children including new baby Rozella. When they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they spent some time camped under the overturned wagon bed before Rosella’s father George built an adobe house on their lot across from Temple Square. Her father George was a stone mason who worked on the construction of The Salt Lake Temple.
When Rosella was 19 she married Lucius Peck. It was an unhappy marriage from the start and was annulled within the first year. Three years later, in 1870, Rosella married John Jenkins. John had come to Utah with his parents and two siblings, also as converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints. They became the parents of 7 children including our direct ancestor Mary Maria Jenkins Watrous, wife of Everest Elliott Watrous. Rosella was a teacher in the community of Pleasant Green where she lived with her family. The town is known today as Magna.
At an older age, Rosella fell from a ladder and injured her arm. It later had to be amputated at the shoulder. She died at the home of her daughter Ada and was buried in the Pleasant Green Cemetery atop the hill overlooking the valley. She is next to her husband John Jenkins. Surrounding her in various burial plots are other members of her family.
The migration of Rosella Newberry Morris Peck Jenkins
Illinois to Utah
Stewart was the second child and oldest son of Samuel Crawford Pancake and Catharine Darling. From all we have read and found, Stewart appears to have been a fine man. At the age of nineteen he enlisted in the army and served from Coshocton County, Ohio for the Union in The Civil War. His uncle William Pancake also served at the same time. Stewart had a portrait taken at age 19 in 1864 before he went to war and the portrait above which was taken one year after his marriage to Priscilla Jane Freeland which was 1876. It was taken while he was investigating mining opportunities in Silver City, Nevada. In 1878, Stewart and Priscilla became the parents of a son, Carl. The next year they added a daughter, Edythe Lillian.
Both in Coshocton County, Ohio and later in Blandinsville, Illinois . . . Stewart and his father Samuel were active in organizations such as the Masonic Lodge and fraternal orders. Both were businessmen, speculators and investors and are generally found together until the death of Samuel Pancake. While most of their lives were lived in Jefferson Township, Coshocton County, Ohio they did move to Illinois where Stewart’s father Samuel and his brother-in-law William McVey bought a bank.
It must have been that the prospects in Silver City, Nevada were not as promising as elsewhere. During the last two years of the 1870s, Stewart and his entire family including parents, brothers, sisters and their families left their most recent home in Blandinsville, Illinois and settled in Salt Lake City, Utah. There, Stewart shared an office on Main Street with his father Samuel and his brother-in-law Henry Reynolds Watrous. Henry was the husband of Stewart’s sister Glendora.
Stewart was listed in the directories of the city as a Deputy Surveyor. He is found in many newspapers as a shareholder in various mines. He served on juries and was involved in the community. Stewart’s brother-in-law Henry provided the legal support for the many investments made by the Pancake and McVey families. After some years, without realizing significant riches, many members of the large Pancake family moved on. Stewart, his brother Jackson and sister Ophelia McVey moved to California with their families. Stewart and Jackson invested in orange groves while Ophelia’s husband William went into various businesses where he was successful. His most prosperous business was in furniture. Many newspaper ads for this period of time in Fresno, California advertise the McVey furniture store.
Stewart died in 1920 in California, survived by his widow, Priscilla who was also known as Jennie and his children Carl and Edythe. While both of his children were married, neither had children of their own. The posterity of Stewart Megge Pancake ended with the deaths of his children in later years. At the time of his death, his widow Priscilla was entitled to a small pension as the widow of a Civil War veteran. Her brother-in-law Jackson Pancake signed the affidavit for her, attesting to her relationship with his brother Stewart and verifying all of the necessary information.
Stewart and his sister Edith Glendora Pancake Watrous died in the same year of 1920. He in California and she and Kansas.
The migration of Stewart Megge Pancake
Ohio to Illinois to Utah to California
This Methodist church was built in 1892 in the little town of Terre Haute in Henderson County Illinois. There, in the next year, Mary June Reynolds Watrous was remembered upon her death. Her husband Jerome Timothy Watrous also came to this little church in a coffin to be remembered as one of the pioneers of the county. He and his wife both began their lives together in this place in the year of 1844.
It was the end of the day when we walked into the church. We had stopped to meet a local farmer who was also a descendant of Henry and Sarah Painter Reynolds, parents of Mary June Reynolds Watrous. We asked if he knew how we might find someone to let us see the inside of the church where our ancestors had worshiped and had been remembered with eulogies. He laughed and said that the church was always open. We could just walk in.
We drove one block, across the main road out of town towards LaHarpe and there, on the left was a small, white board church. A stone in the corner read 1892. The doors were old and filled with stained glass. The wood benches were beautiful and the simple church had been given much care. Tom sat in the back row and looked around. He said that he could almost imagine his great-great grandparents in this place. He could imagine the caskets of both of them, with members of his family following along as mourners. He wondered if his great grandfather Henry caught a train in Salt Lake City and returned to his childhood home to pay his last respects to his mother and later to his father. We wondered but we don’t know.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of being in the same place as an ancestor. Seeing what they saw. Hearing what they might have heard. As the only descendant of Jerome and Mary’s son Henry to ever know about the town of Terre Haute or to be in the church where their funerals took place. . . it was a very special feeling. Now we know them because we looked for them. We got to know them as we learned about them. They know us. We longed to close our eyes and open them again . . . as unseen visitors in this very room in 1892 and again in 1903. While we finally know the fine face of Jerome Watrous, the face of his wife Mary has not come our way. Maybe tomorrow.