Elizabeth "Betsey" Timmons

Elizabeth “Betsey” Timmons was the wife of John K. Timmons and the mother of Mary O. Timmons Chenoweth (1845-1919). Through her daughter Mary, she is the grandmother of Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley and Chuck’s great-great-great-grandmother on the paternal Chenoweth-Timmons branch.

”Betsey” — the family nickname

Per Roberta Burnes Walker (June 2026), “Betsey” was her family nickname — almost certainly a 19th-century shortening of Elizabeth, the standard naming-pattern of the period. The maiden surname Mary Eesley Bean’s Eesley Family History and the Egge / Dale GEDCOM records both carry as “Elizabeth Betsey ?” with the surname blank — meaning her birth-family name has not yet been recovered into the digital record. A pass against the 1850 or 1860 Ohio census for John K. Timmons’s household would likely surface her full name; she would have been alive in both census years (Mary was 5 in 1850).

The companion portrait — Grandmother Timmons

A high-resolution scan of her portrait arrived in June 2026 from Roberta Burnes Walker’s Chenoweth family album, where the photograph sits on a gold-bordered album page labeled in cursive at the bottom: “…er + Grandmother Timmons” — the trailing “-er” almost certainly the end of “Grandfather + Grandmother Timmons”. The companion frame on the same or adjacent album page is her husband John K. Timmons, labeled “Grandfather + …” The two-portrait pairing reads as husband-and-wife companion frames, the kind a mid-century Ohio couple would have sat for once and kept side-by-side ever after.

The portrait shows Betsey seated in a chair with one hand resting on the armrest, the other folded across her lap. She wears a dark wide-skirted dress with leg-of-mutton-style fuller sleeves at the upper arm tightening at the forearm, a small round neckline, and a center-parted hairstyle pulled back in the period-conventional way. Her face is composed and direct, similar in temperament to the portrait of her husband on the facing page. The dress pattern (leg-of-mutton sleeves, fitted bodice) places the sitting in the 1860s — consistent with a mid-life portrait around the same time as John K.’s companion sitting.

What the GEDCOM has now filled in

The June 2026 trace against Dale’s FamilySearch tree answers most of what this page previously left open:

• Her life dates — born 1807, died 2 December 1875. The 1860s dating of the portrait fits. And it settles the question this page once posed: she died two years before Lillie Dale’s 1877 birth, so she did not live to see her granddaughter’s daughter.
• Her pre-Timmons name — the record carries it as “Pryor Ranes.” This is the lead that was missing: most likely a maiden Ranes (or Raines) with an earlier married Pryor — or a compound the record has run together. A Pickaway/Franklin County marriage record, or the 1850/1860 Ohio census for John K. Timmons’s household, would confirm how the two names fit.

Still open:

• Her family of origin — with the Ranes / Pryor lead in hand, the deepest Chenoweth-Timmons research thread on this side of the archive can now be pushed a generation further back.

Sources: Roberta Burnes Walker, June 2026 email batch with the “Grandfather/Grandmother Timmons” album-page photographs and the “Betsey may have been her nickname” note. Egge’s Chenoweth-site structured record names her as Elizabeth “Betsey” but with maiden surname blank. The Chenoweth family album holds the portrait scanned here.