Rosetta Mowers Pettit

PETTIT MOWERS BICKNELL

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 10/13/2010 at 19:56:07

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Rosetta (Mowers) Pettit
By Lani Pettit

Rosetta A Mowers was born, March 8, 1861, at Kansas City, Missouri, to Charles Morticar and Susan Jane Bicknell Mowers. (See story under Susan Jane Bicknell Mowers Wetzel). She and her parents lived in Illinois, Kansas and Minnesota. Rosie was once chosen the prettiest girl at the fair, with her long black hair. She was a small woman with snappy dark eyes and a beautiful singing voice.

At a young age, Rosetta married Sam Beard, and lived in Riley County, Kansas. They had a daughter, Josephine, and two sons, W Dan and John Wesley Beard (later a Presbyterian minister, see his story). The Beard marriage was not successful, however. So the story goes, poor Rosie was usually left alone to raise the children and do the plowing. Then one day she and the children ‘took off across the fields to her mother’s’. A second marriage for Rosie was also short lived. She and Israel Alexander may have had one child before they were divorced.

Rosetta later married Thomas J Allen Pettit, the son of Allen G and Martha Jane Bayles Pettit. The Pettit family, with seven children, lived in Sioux City from about 1892. (see biography of Thomas Pettit.)

Later on, the widowed Rosetta married John F Bright, the son of Levi and Mary Gehr Bright. John had no children of his own, but he was known as ‘Grandpa Bright’ to the Pettit descendants.

Rosetta Mowers Beard Alexander Pettit Bright died in Sioux City on October 19, 1939.