Ansel Watrous

Who is Ansel Watrous?

Ansel Watrous was a U.S. newspaper editor and historian. A longtime resident of Fort Collins, Colorado, he is noted for History of Larimer County, Colorado, published in 1911 as the first comprehensive published history of Larimer County, Colorado. A Forest Service campground in the Poudre Canyon in the Roosevelt National Forest northwest of Fort Collins is named for him.

This biography was by his grand niece, Doris Greenacre from a speech given on January 28, 1985 at Colorado State University

Ansel was born November 1, 1835 in Conquinbroom County, New York, the eldest of six children of Oron and Jane Watrous. Oron was a brother of William Watrous, who would settle in Fort Collins in 1871, where Ansel, his nephew, would join him years later. The Watrous family came from England in colonial times. They and their descendents were prominent in the affairs of war and peace in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York, during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Indian Wars.

Ansel was named for his paternal grandfather, a country squire of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.