Representative Thomas Watts View All Years

THOMAS WATTS, who died at Deep Creek, in Clinton County, on the 3d of December, was one of the earliest settlers in that part of the State. He was born in Vermont in 1816, coming to Iowa in 1838. The Territory had been organized that year. Iowa consisted at that time of a vast region of wild prairie, interspersed with creeks, rivers and lakes, bordered by fringes of woods, and groves, which served as guides to hunters, trappers and emigrants traversing the great plains. Mr. Watts was charmed with the beauty and fertility of the new country, and took a claim in the Deep Creek Valley. Here he made a fine farm home upon which he spent fifty-six years of his life. It was to this home he took his bride fifty years ago. All of their children were born and reared to manhood and womanhood on the old homestead, where their father died at the age of 78. Mr. Watts held many township and county offices, and was an influential member of the Legislature of 1858.