JESSE L. WATSON was born in Bedford County, Va., April 23, 1806, and is a son of Thomas and Rebetta (Mobeman) Watson. When Jesse was five years old, his father removed to Greene County, Ohio, and engaged in mercantile business, and to Jamestown when he was fourteen years old, and conducted the same line. Here Jesse remained assisting his father until he was married, February 7, 1828, to Mary McCart. On October 30, 1829, he moved to Tippecanoe County, Ind., where he remained one year, and thence to this county, where he bought forty acres of timber land, which he cleared, and built a log cabin-16xl8-one of the first in the county. lie and his brother farmed and raised stock together. In 1833, his father removed from Ohio to Tippecanoe County, and leased Davis' Ferry, in which Jesse assisted him during four years, and afterward engaged with his brother, Charles M., in mercantile business at the Battle Ground. In 1855, he returned to White County, and purchased town lots in New Bradford (now called Monon). Mr. Watson's wife died in April, 1842, and in June, 1844, he married Sarah Peck, of Dearborn County, who also died in 1846, leaving one child-William W. In 1848, he married Mary Langsdon, of Montgomery County., Ohio, by whom he had five children, of whom but one-James S. survives; this wife died in 1855. In 1857, he married Delinda Dewace, of Ohio, and the same year purchased the only tavern in the village, but afterward engaged in merchandising until 1870, when he traded this for a farm ; he is now in the lumber business. Mr. Watson has been Justice, Notary and Postmaster, and is the oldest survivor in the county.

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