Family Trees--The Morgan/McCormack side
As a child I gave very little thought to ancestors. I
suppose most don’t. We are much too concerned with where we are going, what
we will become and the whole process of becoming a “grown up” to care much
about our roots. For many, ancestry hardly emerges as a concern until middle age or
even later. Possibly when the older members of the family began to die off, I
suddenly got interested in and concerned about saving for posterity whatever
information I could. I started to fall heir to family photographs, bits and
pieces of genealogical research and then tried to dredge up old stories I had
subconsciously recorded when I was young.
Now I find myself the unlikely matriarch of the clan, both
of my cousins’ generation which included both family lines and even somewhat of
my step children and grandchildren. It
is too late now for regrets that I did not ask more questions, get names
written on the backs of old photographs and become more organized in my
archival tasks. But here I am, and I’m the best there is in this particular
situation—sad though that may be!
I really do not remember my paternal grandparents because
they died when I was very small. I have some photos and family stories and
maybe a very dim vignette or two that might be memory and might be just what I
have been told or imagination.
My paternal grandfather was an only child although there had
been a girl born either before or after him who was either stillborn or died
very young. His mother had been a widow, Martha Jane Martin, with older children
but she and his father only had him. I know his father’s name was John King
Lawrence Morgan. The story was he was a riverboat captain on the Missouri , fell ill with
something like typhoid and was nursed back to health by a widow who ran a
boarding house and later they were married. He just appears as if born full grown! The pair was buried in Missouri, in
a Pisgah Cemetery
in Saline County
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| Grandma with me, spring '43 |
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| Grandma Morgan |
Grandma came from an old Virginia
family distant kin in one line to the Birds, Carters etc. Her family migrated to Missouri either before
or after the Civil War. Her maternal grandparents were first cousins, offspring
of two brothers named Haynie. Her father’s name was Daniel McCormack and he was
born in Kentucky but came to Missouri . Grandma, born Dec 28, 1879 was apparently the
youngest of several children having one older sister and a least four or five
brothers. My dad’s cousin, the son of Grandma’s sister, did a lot of
genealogical research and compiled a book so that side of the family, if one
trusts his research, is well documented back to the days of Charlemagne!.
At any rate, Charles Alva Morgan married Harriet Vernetta
McCormack on April 3, 1905. They lived in Slater, Columbia
and Kansas City , Missouri Missouri , in the same cemetery as their
parents in Slater, the Slater City Cemetery. The two elder sisters had no children. Dad had three, Aunt
Roxie had two sons and Uncle Dan had two girls and a boy plus four of his
wife’s children that he adopted.
Sad to say I had little contact with those cousins while I
was growing up and never did bond with them very much. Grandma had the huge
obsession with family common among the Irish and her children were almost
equally intense about it except for Dad. He always went his own way.
Unfortunately, he usually only contacted his siblings when he wanted something
and never lived close to them after he left home. I think the general consensus
is that he was spoiled rotten and always willfully self-centered though very
charming and charismatic when he chose to be The other four all stayed in
proximity for most of their lives.
Grandma was never anything except a homemaker and I gather
that was her choice and good fortune. She was a fine cook and an excellent
seamstress and perhaps aided and abetted by her daughters, pushed to move up to
larger and better homes and places where all her children could go to
college. I suppose she may have had a
high school education. Grandpa did and a business college course as well.but all five of their kids got one or more
degrees. All three girls were teachers
and Dad also taught a few years. Uncle became a surgeon. I’ve heard that
Grandma was one to celebrate all the holidays with great gusto and try to make
even ordinary days special and fun. As a child, I tended to idolize her memory
and the many stories my dad told about her. I wanted nothing more than to be
considered like her.
As a young woman, she had beautiful auburn hair and was quite
pretty from one early photo I have. However, in later years she grew very heavy
and I am sure that impacted her health. She was probably at least borderline
diabetic and had heart and circulatory problems that caused her early death.
She died on May 3, 1945 at the age of sixty five. I would guess she was about 5’6” and I am sure
weighed over two hundred pounds at her death.
Grandpa was a large man, about 6’2” and he also became
heavy. I found from an obituary that he served in the Spanish-American War
though not as part of Roosevelt ’s Rough
Riders. He had also gone out west as a youth perhaps with or to see a half brother or
other relative on his mother’s side, where he worked awhile in Wyoming and then came back to Missouri to care for aged parents. There he met and fell in love with Grandma. She seems to have been the only
woman for him and he was enamored by her vivacious nature, beauty and
charm.
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| Grandpa Morgan, Roxie, Dad, Grace, Ruth, Dan-- ready for their mother's funeral |
His lifelong trade was railroading. I’m not sure where he
started but he ended up a passenger conductor for the Chicago and Alton
Railroad, a long-defunct Midwestern line. This meant he was gone a lot and it
seems he gave his wife free rein and all the financial support he could,
leaving the household and child-rearing in her hands almost completely. This was
both good and bad! He was devastated when Grandma died and just existed for a
few more years, moving to southern California
to live with his youngest daughter for his final years. He died on November 1,
1947 at the age of sixty nine.
The five Morgan children died in the same order as their
birth. All but Uncle Dan were diabetic the last years of their life and most had
heart or arterial diseases that led to their deaths. Aunt Ruth also had cancer.
She had a mastectomy in her early fifties and eventually got a brain tumor
which was her immediate cause of death. Uncle Dan stayed leaner and more fit
but finally got prostate cancer and declined rapidly in health after that. He was in his early 80s but the rest were in mid-seventies. Dad was just short of 77 at his death. Actually I suppose they all lived fairly normal or average
life spans for their times. I just tend to contrast theirs to the long lives of
my maternal grandparents. They seemed to come from some especially hardy and
healthy Kentucky
hill people and were survivors.
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