Kewaneeans Watch Watts Brothers Prepare Second Baptist Church Barbecue
September 4, 1945 Kewanee, IL

Blazes and sparks at Acorn and Division streets attracted the attention of many Kewaneeans on the eve of Labor day. As curious People stopped in cars and joined The circle of spectators, they were delighted to discover an old fashioned pit barbecue. The Pit was six feet deep, twenty feet long and four feet wide. This is small compared to some we've made" said Eudell Watts who was supervising. For almost a half century Mr. Watts and his three brothers, Arthur Jr., Robert and sister Ethel have made a business of holding southern barbecues.
They were taught by their father Arthur, a former slave who is now 106 years old. The father instructed his son well in making tender, juicy barbecues. In years past, he always made his special recipe for basting and he never told it anyone except his sons. Now the elderly gentleman sits in a rocker and watches the meat sizzle, but he has forgotten the ingredients of his choice recipe which he brought from Missouri in his youth
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Man hopes vintage recipe proves a winner

Dispatch/Argus photo
by Chuck Thomas
Quad-Cities Online

Eudell Watts III holds a jar of his Old Arthur's Kewanee Red Sauce.
By Carol Loretz, Dispatch/Argus Staf writer

ROCK ISLAND -- If family recipes passed down through generations are the best ones, Old Arthur's Kewanee Red Sauce has got to be a winner. The label on the bottle of barbecue sauce features a 1916 photograph of a man in bib overalls, holding up a pork shoulder in one hand and a knife in the other. That man is Arthur Watts, a former slave who died in 1945 at age 108, but not before he shared his popular recipe with his children. They passed it down three generations to Eudell Watts III of Rock Island, who now bottles the sauce and is selling it in Kewanee and the Quad-Cities.
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Hog Days
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News-byte:
‘Reagan never forgot his football buddies’
By Todd Welvaert,


Ronald Reagan, then California governor, and the late Eudell Watts of Rock Island share a laugh during a 1967 gathering at Eureka College, where both played football. At the left is Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill.
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Kewaneeans played football with Ronald Reagan

By DAVE CLARKE Regional Coordinator
February 10, 2003

When former President Ronald Reagan, who turned 92 on Thursday, told football stories from his college football days, he always told one about "Lump" Watts, a four-year, standout athlete and 1928 graduate of Kewanee High School.
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Kewanee Star Courier
17 May 1926

Watts Wins Pole Vault at Annual State Track Meet: Eudell "Lump" Watts well-known athlete of the Kewanee High School proved himself a 1926 state champion last Saturday morning when he won the pole vault at the annual state interscholastic track and field meet at the University of Illinois clearing the bar at a height of 11 feet, nine inches and the national high school meets is 12 feet eight inches. Watts' attempt Saturday go over the bar at 12 feet would have proved successful but the standards were a little too far away and he knocked it off coming down. Next year he hopes to take another first place in the same event and set a new state record.