Genealogy and History of the Watts family of Southern Ohio

by Flossie Watts, August 29, 1949

(The following is a cover letter Flossie wrote to her nephew Richard Grayum Watts)

Waverly Ohio
August 29, 1949

Dear Richard,

I am convinced that the enclosed narative titled "We the Wattses." needs to be appologized (sic) for, so I beg of you to excuse a very lame ending on what started out to be a quite interesting story.

Three reasons I agive for a drab ending, first, I was alone, my time was my own and I had quiet and freedom from worry when I wrote this almost to completion. Second, I have been very sick for many weeks since that first writing was done, and am not yet up to par.

And third, I am worried to death lately, all of Bryans troubles I have to bear, continual talking, or mourning, or raving, why he is not still even in his sleep, and he has about lost his reason, and I am too old, sick and nervous to keep a mental patient in my care. His furniture piled deep in my already over full little house and the fact that this is no more my home but his; and he talked to me yesterday until I could not type, let alone remodel a drab ending, and besides it is very difficult to narrate the present time and make it interesting. I did not name you Watts children, you know more about them than I do. And I was so hindered.

Richard, if I have to go on living like this I pray God that my life may be short, very short from here on out.

I pity my brother but that does not make living with him at all bearable. Just now he came in again, and I who am used to my home alone, and detest tobacco smoke, cannot even write when he comes in and sprawls on my couch and smokes and talks.

I can type better than this but when I am so distracted and worried I cannot do anything. Had I sense enough I would go insane. He asked to stay six weeks, has been here six months and all the talk about going on his own, that is what he needs, and he has more value in property than any other of the family. Why, I wonder, should I furnish him a home, and work myself sick for him? It just is not fair.

I did not change the writeup because that now he is divorcing his wife. (sic)It looks better as is, and was that way when I wrote it.

Should you desire, you can describe and locate your fathers family and make an insert. I just did not feel equal to it.

I hope this puts you on familiar ground with generations past of "We the Wattses", and though there is a lot left out, it is what my memory retained of what parents and grandparents told me.

I will mail this first class and you should get it in good shape. I hope you enjoy it, I enjoyed writing it and I have a carbon copy but at the last I cannot enjoy anything, and have done a big washing today, gotten two meals for a man and now must can tomatoes whtn I am under a doctors care and ordered to lie down alot and do no lifting work so I carried in and out 16 gals of water, and 4 baskets of wet garments. Thus my life is not made easy.

My love to all and bye now,

Your old and worried auntie

Flossie We, the Wattses
By
Flossie Watts

Back in the days when Abe' Lincoln was reading law by the light from the fire-place, there lived on a farm in the State of Maryland, a tall broad shouldered young man known as John Watts. He was an only child and in his young days not too strong, inclined to a too thin frame work, and a too frequent cough; his shoe-black eyes like holes burned in a blanket, but those eyes were trigger-wise, and had a way of looking at folks that amounted to looking through them.

John loved to hunt and when his father John Watts Senior, called him bright and early to harness the teams for the days work on the farm, the rumpled blankets gave mute evidence that their lodger had gone before dawn to stalk the quail or garner a load of squirrels: or whatever; it all depended on the time of year. And his trusty rifle hit the bullseye at shooting matches for miles around, bringing home the turkey was just one of Johns tricks.

John also loved the timber and the river, and though his dad needed him on the farm he ran away at about 19 years and joined a group of Lumber Jacks, and in the company of those winter hardened men this frail young fellow camped through the long winter, cutting and hauling the virgin timber, and in the Spring helped to run the logs they had harvested down river: An exposing and hazardous job, but instead of killing him as his frantic mother feared, John snapped out of his frailness and became an invaluable man in the group.

This occupation finally took John Watts as far North as Ohio, and he was made foreman of a bunch of junior jacks, as the younger fellows were called, and posted to cut and market a large tract of Oak timber near Galapolis Ohio, where he met and loved a pretty auburn haired little miss, Nancy Cole by name.

Nancy was the daughter of the local banker who much resented the tall young timber foreman, forbidding him the house and ordering Nancy to refuse to see him: the course of true love, you know, seldom runs smoothly.

So irate was father Cole that John ceased seeing Nancy for her safety, "Children, obey your parents," was the law in the Cole household and the petite Nancy was only 17, hence a minor.

Having been educated only in the school of experience, for in John Watts' da public schools were very far between, he, on receiving a letter from his beloved Namcy, was utterly unable to read the dainty feminine hand, and not wanting the boys in camp to know the contents of his letter, John walked thirty miles to the wharf, where boarding a steamboat he solicited the aid of the captain, who being duly (sic) sworn to secrecy, read the cherished missive which was to the effect that it's writer, one Nancy Cole would be at the Methodist Church on a certain night, still faithful though she had not heard from him through the long winter, and "if you care to come, wait outside please, Father is watching".

John Watts was there, and when Nancy with a group of other girls and far ahead of her careful parents, emerged from the old church door she slipped a warm little hand into his and together they sped around the corner and both on one horse they rode off into the night like "Young Lochinvar" only no one followed, for the other girls when they missed her naturally concluded that the pretty Nancy had gotten a beau, and went on home undisturbed. It was the last time the(y) every saw Nancy.

John took Nancy to the home of a Baptist preacher, one Rev. Ames (or Amos), who tucked her in for the night, or what remained of it, and John returned the horse to it's owner and walked back the following day having procured the legal papers, and that eve by the light of tallow candles in the one room cabin where the kindly old minister and his genial wife lived, these twain were made one.

To say that banker Cole was furious was to put it mild; He promptly sent her personal belongings to the lumber camp, with the information that he had cut her out of his will and wished that she never darken his door, and she never did.

Soon realizing that camp life was not the proper setting for his bride, John sold out his business and took Nancy back to his old home in Maryland: Where his parents, overjoyed at his return welcomed his young wife with a real love.

John began work with his father on the farm and Nancy took over mostly in the house for mother Watts was far from well. A year or more on the farm was enough for the young couple. Mother Watts had died and home was not home anymore. Besides this discouraging situation, those about them owned slaves; but the Watts Family had never owned nor worked a "black" so were called "Poor white trash(") by the slave holders about them, though they were plenty full handed. This cut deeply into the heart of Nancy, proud beauty of the quaint old river town, who with John Watts third beginning to toddle about, and grandfather Watts failing so swiftly after the death of his companion, was nervous and over-worked.

John Watts sensed danger in this and persuaded his father to sell the farm and locate in a village on the river where he obtained work on a small "Packet" for John loved the river, and soon became captain of a vessel and I thrill yet at memory of tales that my grandfather used to tell about when his father, proud captain of "The River Queen" used to race the other boats on the "Old Missippi" (sic). How the excited deck hands used to cram their coats, boots and such into the engines in an attempt to out-fire their opponents and pass them in mid-stream. I am still convinced that neither the Rose Bowl Tournament" nor the world famous "Kentucky Derby" are one whit more exciting.

In a few years grandfather, John Watts senior, passed away and woon after John and Nancy, with their family Jonny Jr. and Cathern, moved up river, and again up river, until finally they located in Jackson County Ohio, buying a small fruit farm on the main highway just east of the village of Jackson.

John builded (sic) a round log blacksmith shop and there earned a living for his growing family, for another son "Amos Cole: named for the old minister who had married them, and his mother's maiden name Cole, though Nancy never sought a reconciliation with her family; Pride was strong in the heart of Nancy Cole Watts.

In course of time another son "Samual" was born, and a few years later Nancy was stricken with what was commonly called "consumption" (actually TB) and they laid her to rest in a strange cemetary near Jackson, not even notifying her people.

John Watts with the aid of his daughter Cathern managed for two years, by the hardest; Amos and Samual, both strapping lads, needed a mothers care and guidance while the over-worked Cathern needed a chance to attend school, if only she could be spared.

It was then that John Watts decided to take a risk and hope for the best: He married a widow, one Mrs. Elizabeth Polly, who had one son, a sickly boy, Randal by name, who was accepted in the Watts family and while the Watts boys worked at the charcoal pits, in the timber and on the farm, Randal Polly helped his mother; doing a womans part about the house, attending the chickens &. &. {etc.}

Elizabeth was well chosen, and proved to be a kind and much loved "Step-mammy" as the children called her. She soon had Cathern in school and did her part nobly (sic) by all.

It makes me hungry yet to recall the good eats that my grandfather Amos Watts used to tell we children of, when we surrounded barrels of pickled beans, corn, cucumbers &. &. that his "Step-mam" used to store for the family to enjoy through the hard long winters; and how his father, with John junior used to drive a yoke of cattle for miles, late in the fall, to where the hickory grew, the nearby forrests (sic) being mostly pine; And there lying in wait for wild hogs, and returning in a few days with six or more fat porkers, their winter meat, and perhaps a deer or so if luck was good, and squirrels, yes my grandfather used to regale us with descriptions of dozens of squirrel skins streched to dry and a ten gallon jar where the fat young fellows were stored in brine for Sunday dinners.

Some folks get glory from imagining that they are in the okay time, and others were "Born thirty years too soon." but I am wondering if it is not that much or more "too late."

When the California gold rush was at it's heit (sic) and "Westward Ho!" was the one far call, The Wattses decided to seek their fortune, so selling out again they, with yoke of milk cows and a team of horses and two covered wagons, set out across the country late in the fall, singing as they rode, "I'm bound for the promised land." But alas for their eager hopes, the snow fell early that Fall, and was very deep over the corduroy roads that were twisted in and out among the hills of South Ohio; and the Watts caravan got only a few miles before they had to camp, they stopped in a valley below Idaho, a small village in Pike County Ohio.

The snow refused to go so they had to stay, and Hohn Junior rode on on(e) of the horses back to the coal-pits and resumed work.

Amos got a job in a barrel factory in Idaho and cathern went to work in a nearby farmer's kitchen. The senior John, rented a house on Stony Ridge and established a black-smith shop, while the youngest, Sammy, attended school, and Randal, the frail step-son of the Watts family was stricken with fever and ague (ache?) and died. Strange but true, the Watts family is burried all the way from Maryland to California.

There were of course in this newly settled community, as in all places where people live, social functions; and Methodist "Meetin" houses heated by large fire-places. Also weddings, and house raisings for the newly-weds.

John Watts fully intended to take his family west to the then famous gold fields, but you know about the "Best laid plans of mice and men", don't you? Cathern, tall, slender and quite pretty, with bright black eyes and willing hands, together with a voice that added much to the worship service in the little log church, had been courted by many and won by one, before the deep-piled snow finally melted. Young William Smith, who wore a full beard because of a throat ailment and weilded the tuning fork with which the choir pitched their singing, was the lucky man.

And Amos Watts the popular young cooper at Idaho, was invited to a "House-raising" for a couple of newly-wed's by the name of Young, who lived on the hill east of Idaho.

A dozen men worked skillfully and long, and by the time the puncheon floor was laid and a clap-board roof finished, the women of the neighborhood arrived with baskets of steaming fictuals and cauldrons of black coffee; and the hungry workers were banqueted in true frontier style.

No present day "Ladie's Aid" ever served more skillfully, and it so happened that a bashful miss of seventeen, and half sister to the bride for whom the home was being cut out of the forrest (sic), was stationed at one side of the large front room, to serve the coffee in cups of every variety, dipping with a gourd dipper and refilling for all who held out an empty cup.

Amos Watts drank enough coffee that day to keep him awake for a week, (or something did;) and the following Sunday he found his way to the Cochran home, where the widow and her daughter lived. Ellen was a bashful but not averse to the attentions of the young cooper, and in the Spring Ellen Cochran became Ellen Watts, and Amos Cole Watts, having located treasure, did not go west.

John Watts junior returned to the caravan in the Spring and he and Samuel together with their parants, went on to Iowa where they stopped to work through the crop season, for their horses were jaded and the work was good.

The broad fields of Iowa corn appealed so greatly to young Samuel that he hired to a farmer for the corn harvest, leaving the Watts caravan. Only John Watts, his wife, and John junior his first-born arrived in the California gold fields, struck gold and spent several years: And there John junior married and he and his several sons and daughters and their offspring live to this present time.

Samuel Watts married in Iowa, and his sons and daughters used to come back to Ohio once in a while, to see the folks; and cousin Will, cousin Annie, Mary and Laura, were folks I used to write to in my kid days. And Jimmy, the boy who by nature did not have any hair; I used to envy him when I had my curls combed.

The call of the timber and the longing for his far away home land drew the now aged John Watts back to Ohio country and with his feeble old wife he finally returned to Pike County where they spent their remaining years in the home of his only daughter Cathern Smith, attended the Methodist Church on Waldrens Hill (aka Waldern or Walderns Hill) and were carried from before it's alter, out to their final resting place in the adjoining cemetary.

Cathern Watts Smith had three sons, Oliver, Samuel and John, all teachers in the Pike County schools: and three daughters, Nancy, Elizabeth and Melvina. The first named, {Nany} died in her young girlhood, the second married George Steiner and their children live now in and near Jamestown Ohio, and in Columbus. And their grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

Amos Watts, a prosterous (prosperous?) cooper, lived in the old house his father had rented, on Stony Ridge, with his wife Ellen, and his two small sons Kellie and Alexander, until an epidemic of measles took the pet lamb from the fold and the bereaved family moved up nearer to Idaho, the village where his work was located.

Yes thrills were to be had in "Ye Olden Days", especially was this the case during the years 1861 to 1865. And Kellie Watts got a real thrill on the day that Morgan, the raider, rode with his gaunt ragged men, adown the Sunfishpike.

Kellie was seven or there-about, and was playing in the barn lot, having great fun throwing the round pebbles still to be found in that locality, into a owls nest in an ancient and gnarled sycamore tree, when, hearing music, and the shuffle of many feet, he turned from his play to see - - men on horses, men on foot and men on crudely improvised stretchers of hickory bark, bearing down upon him; filling the barn lot, and the yard surrounding his home.

They apparently did not see him, though as he afterward related it, he stood in plain view; completely paralized (sic), and his childish heart beating louder than their worn out drums had beaten a moment before.

At that moment Kellie Watts fully expected to be shot but concluded to die trying, so he fell to the foul barnyard earth and rolled under the crib where the golden ears of Sunfish bottom corn were piled high, and dragged himself on to the sagging door of the abandoned crib that stood in the rear. The door was open and with foresight born of fear Kellie left it open, but secreted himself among the farm tools stored therin.

Cautiously he wormed his slender shrinking form along the rough wall until he reached a knot-hole, then closing one eye he applied the other dilligently (sic) to said knot-hole and to his quivering heart's relief, he saw his mother, last seen in the kitchen where even now the raiders were taking over, riding "Bird" the family's one good horse: Riding slowly and in a meandering way, leaving no tracks on the dry woodsy loam and leaves.

Should disappear, then reappear and face the valley, and Kellie, small as he was, sensed that she was looking for him; so thrusting his hand out under the edge of the clap-board roof he waved it bravely and was relieved to see his mother cross her lips with two fingers, (A warning for quiet) and ride out of sight.

Through that knot-hole Kellie watched those starving southerners eat everything eatable in the kitchen and cellar, and go to the crib before which he stood, and into which he had almost crept for hiding, and empty it of every ear of corn, some into sacks, some into their seemingly famished horses. And yes, he watched with trembling heart as they inspected the tracks where old Bird had been led to water at noon: then search out that track in the lot, and the lane for the direction she had gone, but the soft loafy covering of the hillside left no mark of hoof nor sound of footfall. And Ellen Watts who had wisely rode into a sumac thicket sat a nervous but motionless horse not a hundred away.

Amos Watts, having seen the raiders go through the village, rushed home over the hill to avoid a meeting with an armed foe and the sooner to arrive and protect his family; He arrived just as the last stragling (sic) bark litter was carried out of his barnyard and was greeted by a shaking and tearful little son, and a pale young wife on a strawberry roan, "Old Bird" who had stood still at the bidding of her mistress.

When Kellie Watts was about ten years old, his father was chosen Superintendant of the "Poor Farm" located at Idaho. He gave up making barrels and for 5 years he with his kindly wife Ellen, cared for the halt, the lame and the blind, together with those destitute because of age.

But he never saw inside a schoolhouse, you say? Yes he did just once and I used to sit on a stool at his feet and hear him tell about that experience. How that while out hunting on a late Fall day he, loaded down with rabbits that had not been lucky that day, he had been tired and hungry, so made his way to a log building on a woodsy hill, and on looking in at one of the windows decided that this huge log room with split log benches where well grown boys and girls sat, with books and slates on a taller bench before them, applying themselves with different degrees of vigilance to learning to read, spell and cipher, must be a school house.

An aged man wearing horn rimmed specticles (sic) and with a crutch near the arm, on the side where a log was missing, sat in front of the youngsters and with his back to Amos; who rightly guessed that this must be the teacher. Amos stood and listened to the sonorous voice of the learned old man for awhile, then being full of fun and not averse to practicle (sic) joking he shook back his shock of curly black hair, smiled knowingly at some of the pupils that had discovered his presense (sic), and with a splendid immitation of the schoolmaster's voice he calls out "Recess----!" and to the old gent's dismay, the entire school rushed out pell-mell. So much for Amos Watts and "Districh School."

And should you wonder how a man of his limited learning could attend to a job of that nature, well just know that there other ways of training an apt mind. Amos, while at work in the copper shop had counted barrels staves by tens, yes by hundreds and thousands; he could do a better job of calculating in his head than a lot can on paper, and having attended meetings in the old log church on Waldren's Hill (aka Waldern or Walderns), where he wisely paid the price of self surrender and got good religion; the kind that makes a man honest and clean, and puts a desire for reading of God's word in his soul; Amos Watts, with the help of his good wife Ellen, did learn to read, write and cipher. And was a member of and an elder in the Pennisten Chappel Church at Idaho to the day he died.

At Idaho, Kellie Watts attended school and learned to do a boy's work on the farm: and swim like none other; and skate for miles in the ice covered waters of Sunfish Creek. On leaving Idaho, Amos Watts purchased a large tract of land on the Ridge Road north of said village: this is still known as "The Watts Farm."

There were two houses on this large farm, the one, a log house under a pear tree, the same that young Amos was helping to erect on the day he met Ellen Cochran, and in that same house his son, years later, began housekeeping, and there the humble writer of this skitt was born.

But, back to Amos Watts and his farm on the hill, he, having worked for five years for Pike County, had no chattels of his own, so with his fifteen year old son Kelly, went in search of some hens which to start a flock. They rode a brand new road wagon and did not know where they were going, but were directed to a farm just over the hill where "good chickens" were raised.

And just over that hill, a short mile away, two pretty young ladies were doing the weeks ironing. Amy, blond like her father, and Almyra, brunette like her curly haired mother, were discussing their boy friends, as girls of all periods do; and another girl, Docia, twelve but small for her age and topped with a masss (sic) of gold-brown curls, and the baby of the family, was washing the dishes in the same large kitchen, and on mischief bent, butting in on her sisters conversation with wise-cracks.

Suddenly Almyra glancing out of the window, burst out "O, Amy! Look! There comes the new neighbor Watts, with a new wagon and the ugliest boy I ever saw."

Amy looked and joined in the laughter while Kellie Watts, unconcious of the attention he was attracting, sat by his dad on the high seat while Amos Watts bargained with neighbor Rose for 35 hens. And the mischevious Docia left her dishes and looked at the new neighbors. A shock of crow-black hair, laughing eyes and a fashionable tan gone in spots, is the way she later described him but at the time she --true to her roll (sic)-- said defiangly "He is not! He is nice looking, and when I grow big I intend to marry him." And how the laughter did roll, but--SHE DID.

Soon a trip across fields to the old Noname School gave that homely Watts boy opportunity to get acquainted with those neighbor girls, even the pertinent little Docia, so small an dquaint, and so good in her books. And call it fate or what you will, among all the pretty misses in that large school, Docia Rose was the only one for whom Kellie Watts had eyes. "Fools may give the reason, Wise men never try."

At 18, Docia had a teachers certificate but failed to get employment, and at 19 she became Mrs. Kelly Watts and went to live in the log house under the pear tree. To this marriage, seven children were born, Leslie C./ father of the lad for whom I write this sketch; Flossie, the humble writer of the same; Linna E.; Kellie Jr.; Joy; John Bryan; and Ardath.

Leslie was a methodist Minister and an able educator, often teaching along with his preaching and winning souls in his school work.

Linna E. was a teacher in Pike and Ross counties up to the Spring. She died at 44 years of age.

Kellie Jr. was a hunter, and a farmer, prospering to marked degree, was killed in a head-on collision at the age of 33.

Joy, taught for years, then married Orla Goodin, resides at Jamestown and there reared and educated her three daughters; Irene, a teacher of religious education in the public schools in Marion Ohio; Hazel Goodin Foster, near Jamestown; and Audrey Goodin Haines of New Burlington Ohio.

Bryan resides in Waverly, together with his wife Ola Smith Watts and has managed the Smigh Rest Home for years.

Ardath, reared her two daughters on a farm near Buchanan Ohio and her husband John Bayhan, worked the county roads and after the girls were scholled (schooled?) and Betty June married and settled in Columbus, one Mrs. John Paul Ingalls, Ardath, a teacher in her youth, again resumed the task of teaching in the Nuchanan Centralized School, while Virginia, a tall flashing brunette, keeps house for her parents.

Now if the finish of this skitt reads like a letter from home please excuse me, it is most difficult to write of the present, and relating what everyone is familiar with is a task indeed; so I add this in closing.

Flossie Watts, your humble narrator, who never did anything worth mention still lives in Pike County. Not the old farm, but in the village of Waverly, 111 E. 3rd St. her address.

Dreams she had many, mostly they failed to come true. In the home of her parents she toiled, cared for the younger brothers and sisters, and loved them well. Then when that part of life was done, made a home for herself and her aged mother, then alone she sewed and wove and did her bit in World War 2 in a war plant.

She does her bit in the church millitant, has written a few books, mostly poetry; and the name on her tombstone will be Watts, for she is proud of the honorable name of "We The Watts'." {the end}