John K. Timmons

John K. Timmons was born 16 May 1806 in Ohio and died 13 May 1888, three days short of his eighty-second birthday — living through the War of 1812 as a child and the Civil War as a man of fifty-five. He is buried in Scioto Township, Pickaway, Ohio — the same Scioto Township that gave his granddaughter Scioto Mafry Chenoweth her name. He was married to Elizabeth “Betsey” Timmons — the maternal grandmother of Lillie Dale Chenoweth and Chuck’s great-great-great-grandmother.

The two portraits — Grandfather and Grandmother Timmons

A new high-resolution scan of John K. Timmons’s portrait arrived in June 2026 from Roberta Burnes’s Chenoweth family album, where the photograph sits on a gold-bordered album page labeled in cursive at the bottom: “Grandfather + …” The companion frame on the same album page is Elizabeth “Betsey” Timmons, labeled “…er + Grandmother Timmons.” The pair are on facing or adjacent album pages — husband-and-wife companion portraits, of the kind a mid-century Ohio couple would have sat for once and kept side-by-side ever after.

The portrait shows John K. seated in a wicker chair, in a dark coat with a black bow-tie and a high-collared white shirt, with a thin angular face, a chin-only beard (no mustache — the classic mid-19th-century “chin curtain” style), and large strong hands resting on his knees. His expression is steady and direct. The wear pattern of the print and the album-page binding place this as a 1860s-1870s carte-de-visite or cabinet card — consistent with a portrait sitting in his late fifties or sixties.

The earlier scan of him in advanced age from Maggie Eesley’s Four Generations deck (where she noted “It’s amazing that someone in the family has kept these old photos”) is the same person at a later date; this Roberta-album frame is the higher-resolution mid-life version.

He is Chuck’s great-great-great-grandfather through his daughter Mary Ohio Timmons Chenoweth (1845–1919), who married Joseph Hill Chenoweth and from whom the Chenoweth-Timmons strand reaches forward to Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley and then to Will Eesley and the line everyone alive in the family today comes from.

Maggie Eesley’s editorial note in her Four Generations archive, on the photograph of him in advanced age:

“It’s amazing that someone in the family has kept these old photos.”

He is the deepest documented ancestor on this branch.

Sources: Maggie Eesley, Four Generations of the Eesley Family (PowerPoint archive); portrait provenance the Chenoweth family album held by Roberta Burnes. Structured record: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — John K. Timmons (K633-3T8). Note: Maggie’s deck records his death year as 1899; the GEDCOM and FamilySearch record give 13 May 1888.