Cora Belle Dunavan was born June 20, 1879, the daughter of Samuel Dunavan and Amanda Miranda Munson. She was the granddaughter of Joseph and Nancy (Green) Dunavan and the great-granddaughter of John and Barbara (Grove) Green. Her maternal grandmother was Rachel Hall, one of the sisters captured by the Indians during the Indian Creek massacre in 1832.

She married Harry Wallace Watts on October 7, 1904. They lived and farmed near Leland, until Harry’s death in 1949.

As can be seen above, Cora lived a long and productive life, dying in Ottawa May 22, 1964. She was generous with her paintings and gave them away freely. I own several. One is a copy of a picture postcard of a Bavarian castle I visited and greatly admired, but my favorite, which hangs in my living room, is a picture of the home in Dayton where I grew up.