When I posted information in 2013 on Asa and Rufus Watson, I had not yet known that their older brother John also moved to Mississippi. Sons of Capt John Wheeler Watson and his wifeMary Ann, they were born in South Kingstown, RI; John in 1804, Asa in 1812 and Rufus in 1814. Both parents died within a week of each other in March 1829.
Three years later, and still in RI, John married Mary Knowles, daughter of Robert and Bathsheba. The following year both his wife and their infant son died and are buried in Elm Grove Cemetery with her parents.
By 1840 John and his 2 younger brothers were in Lowndes County, Mississippi. There is uncertainty as to whether or not the John Watson who married Mary C Pierce in that county in 1839 is John from RI; no further record of Mary has been found. No female was recorded in the Watson household's June 1 census record.
In 1842 John, then 38, married Harriet Lenora Prowell as his second or third wife. She was the 20 year old daughter of David Prowell and Rachel Morris, born in South Carolina. They soon had two children: Mary born 1842 and Thomas Wheeler born 1845. The year after Thomas' birth John died, age 41, leaving his young wife with 2 children under the age of 5. She married again and had 3 more children with Charles Washington Caldwell, a native of Virginia born in 1815. His step-daughter Mary Watson would marry his brother Dr Thomas Joseph Caldwell and lure the rest of family (including her brother Thomas with his family and their half-siblings) to follow them to Lamar, Texas.
