Although court records in Loudoun County, as well as the entry in the family Bible, refer to him as “John Thomas William Morris” he seems to have dropped the name “John” early in life. He was simply “Thomas Morris” in the 1850 census, an 18-year old boarder in the household of Henry Wolf of Olive Township just three households away from John Clymer and his mother Nancy Clymer.2 Thomas Morris’s occupation was listed as “clerk”.
As “Thos. Wm. Morris” he was married to Mary Thorla on 17 October 1852 by a J. P. named Jonathan D. Gibbs.3 She was the sister of William O. Thorla who had married his sister Sarah Ann Morris three years earlier. Both were children of Benjamin Thorla of Massachusetts, a farmer who had come to Olive Township in 1816 with his parents and his wife Jane Dyer of Maryland. Benjamin Thorla was also the proprietor of the township’s first tavern.
Thorla was later spelled “Thurlow” by most of his descendants. His son Thomas M. “Thurlow” made that point in a 1904 article.4 and Mary styled her maiden name as Mary Thurlow in her 1908 widow’s pension application.
His disability was more specifically described when he applied for a pension increase in 1897 as a “shell wound of abdomen, alleged resulting affection of stomach, bowels, kidneys, bladder, nervous system and heart”.
In 1907 Congress increased the amount of veteran’s pensions based on age and length of service, and Thomas Morris applied for a regular pension. He stated that he was born on 26 May 1831 in Loudoun County, Virginia, that after the war he lived in Ohio from 1864 to 1871 then in Kansas from 1871 to present, and that his occupation was Recorder for Cowley County. Although his height was omitted from the physical description he was said to have blue eyes and light brown hair. He also fortuitously listed the names and birth dates of his five children. Unfortunately, he died before the application could be processed. Following her husband’s death, Mary Morris applied for a widow’s pension and received $12 monthly.
The 92nd Regiment was one of Ohio’s most active units. It was organized during the summer of 1862 and mustered on 1 October 1862 with 949 men. A week later it was attached to the Kanawha Division and marched to Charleston. In January 1863 it was sent to Nashville and spent the next two years campaigning mainly in Tennessee and Georgia, participating in some of the most famous battles of the Civil War including Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Kennesaw Mountain and the Siege of Atlanta. For a full list of the regiment’s engagements and activities, see this page.
Carrie Morris Graham’s obituary states that “when she was 12 (sic) her parents moved from Caldwell, O. to settle on a claim near Arkansas City, Kas.” Thomas Morris’s claim was for 150 acres on the Arkansas River in the western part of Beaver Township, very near the western border of the county and barely a dozen miles north of Oklahoma. It was about equidistant from the towns of Arkansas City and Winfield, which spent the next few years vying for preeminence.
Frances Lily Morris (19 May 1853 – 11 January 1911) Typically rendered as “Frances L., she was occasionally recorded as “Lillie” or “Lily”. She was in her parents census households in 1860 (age 7) and 1870 (age 17). She married about 1874 to Russell H. True (1842-1904) as his second wife and the couple were counted in the March 1875 state census living near her parents and in the 1880 census of Winfield. According to a local Florida history, “Russell True, his wife Frances, and their daughters Carrie and Mary moved to Mount Dora in 1884 from Kansas… suffer[ed] from ill health [and] was advised by his physician to relocate to a warmer climate.”18 Russell True worked for a local merchant for a few years and in 1895 he bought a general store that he operated until his death. He was active in local affairs, serving as postmaster from 1889 to 1893 and on the local school board.
Walter I. True (1877 – aft1910) Walter was still in his parents’ household in 1885, age 8, but shortly thereafter was returned to Kansas as a child inmate of the Kansas State Asylum for Feebleminded and Idiotic Youth that was established at Winfield in 1887. (The name was changed to The Kansas State Home for the Feebleminded in 1909.) The home was intended to train young people to operate in society, but Walter True was still there almost twenty-five years later, enumerated as a 33-year old inmate in the 1910 census. The facility’s longtime director, Dr. F. Hoyt Pilcher, was an advocate for eugenics and is reported to have illegally sterilized as many as 150 inmates. In 1913 Kansas enacted a “sterilization act” that targeted “habitual criminals, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles, and insane” that gave legal cover to the Home’s eugenics program. Whether Walter survived all that is unknown. I could find no record of him after 1910.
Carrie Alice True (3 October 1878 – 6 April 1947) She never married. She worked in the mercantile business with her father and continued to work in retail after his death, eventually becoming the proprietor of a shop in Mount Dora called the Rest-A-While Gift Shop. Orlando newspapers reported that she made annual trips to New York City to purchase stock for the store. She and her sister were shown living together in every state and federal census through 1945, in an expanded version of the original family home on 5th Avenue and Grandview St. Carrie died unexpectedly on Easter morning in 1947 and is buried in the same cemetery as her parents and sister.
Mary Morris True (28 January 1889 – 1 November 1960) She remained single into old age, living with her sister Carrie and working as a cashier and bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Mount Dora. She was called Mary well into middle age but later styled herself as “Mamie” True.22 In 1951, four years after her sister’s death, Mary married (as Mary Morris True) an elderly widower named John Abraham Crosswhite who had recently relocated from Texas to Mount Dora. Her husband died just two years later. Mary’s obituary called her “the last member of a pioneer Mount Dora family”, summarized several of her civic activities and mentioned that she had worked on compiling a history of the town.23 Mary is buried with her parents and sister in the Pine Forest Cemetery.
Granville Morris (15 December 1854 – 6 April 1928) See separate page.
Caroline “Carrie” Morris (31 August 1856 –1934) She was “Caroline” in 1860, but thereafter was known as “Carrie”. According to her obituary, at the age of thirteen she “put up her glossy brown hair and donned long dresses and took the teacher’s examination for a certificate” then taught in a sod schoolhouse near her home in Whitfield. At eighteen she was elected superintendent of schools for Cowley County and at twenty-one she rode by horseback forty-odd miles south to Perry, Oklahoma and started a millinery store.24 Within the next two or three years she somehow arrived in Harper County, Kansas where she married William Oran Graham (1850-1937), a University of Kentucky graduate, about 1879 or 1880.25 They are enumerated as a couple in the 1880 census of the city of Harper, where he edited and published the local newspaper. By the 1885 state census they had produced their son Horace. About 1888 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri where William O. Graham was listed in the 1889 city directory as publisher of the K. C. Traveler. The 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses enumerated them in Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri where William Graham was a well-known printer and occasional author who later ran the Kansas City operation of the Great Western Type Foundry. For a time Carrie’s sister “Louie M.” Morris was his partner in a stationary printing company, operating as “Morris & Graham”.
William Oran Graham’s family was the subject of a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” article about his family’s remarkable longevity. His mother’s parents, who both lived past 85, produced fourteen children who lived to an average of 88 years.28 One of them was his mother who bore twelve children of her own among whom not a single death had occurred in 77 years. All but one of her children died in the subsequent decade, William being the next to last.
Aloha Graham (2 September 1911 – 16 July 2004) She was still in her father’s household in 1830. She first married Ferdinand Hauk and had a daughter named Phyllis, then married William J. Crawford on 26 March 1944 and had a daughter named Karen. The 18 July 2004 issue of the Kansas City Star contains an obituary for Aloha Graham Crawford that identifies her as the daughter of Horace Roy and Wanda Graham.30 She died in Shawnee Mission, Kansas according to the Social Security Death Index, and at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City according to the obituary. She was survived by two children named Phyllis Hauk Kerr of Kansas City and Karen Crawford Voss of Des Moines.
Phyllis Graham (25 February 1915 – February 1995) Horace Graham gave permission for the marriage of his daughter Phyllis to Mitchell J. Henderson Jr. on 22 December 1934. She died in St. Louis according to the Social Security Death Index.
McDonald Thorla Morris (19 January 1861 – 27 April 1919) He was evidently named for his teenaged uncle McDonald Thorla (or perhaps both were named for the same person).31 He married Flora L. Sherburne, daughter of William Sherburne, in Oxford, Sumner County, Kansas on 18 February 1885.32 At this time McDonald owned two hardware stores. A few months after the marriage he sold a half-interest in his Attica store, managed by his father, to his brother Granville Morris.33 Although his brother-in-law owned the local newspaper, surely a business advantage, Granville promptly relocated the “Morris Brothers Hardware” store to Medicine Lodge in Barber County.34 The move was famously unsuccessful and Granville appears to have taken the blame. In July 1888 he bought out McDonald’s remaining half interest in the business, auctioned off the stock, and spent several years being sued over $10,000 in debts to suppliers. 35 36. This was, however, only a temporary setback to the Morris Brothers business.
The 1892, 1896, and 1898 directories list him as a partner in the New York Hardware store on West Oklahoma St. His partner for the first several years was the mayor, A. O. Farquharson. He also partnered with his brother Granville in 1894 to open a branch of New York Hardware about twenty miles northward in Perry, Oklahoma.38 He bought out Farquharson’s interest in the Guthrie store, and in the city directories of 1899 and thereafter, he was listed as the proprietor of Guthrie’s New York Hardware. In early 1899 McDonald and Granville partnered in still another venture, buying a hardware store in Chandler, which they would briefly operate as the firm of Morris & Morris with Granville in charge of it.39 Two years later the business, by then known as New York Hardware, was sold to investors.40 This was the last venture in which the brothers partnered.
When he died on 27 April 1919 the newspaper reported that Guthrie’s merchants closed their doors for two hours for the funeral.44 The same article mentioned that he left two sons: “Tom, who came home from Harvard University, and Don, who was in business with his father”. He was buried in the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, where a stone still marks the grave. In the 1920 census, his widow Flora was enumerated as head of household with her son Donald and his family. Donald Morris sold the hardware store in 1921 and returned to his wife’s home in Massachusetts. The widow Flora is not buried in the family plot; she seems to have moved to Massachusetts to live near her sons. She was enumerated in a boardinghouse in Arlington, Massachusetts in the 1930 census.45 She died in 1935 and is buried in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery as Flora Linda Morris. McDonald and Flora had four children, one of whom died in infancy according to the 1900 census, and another who predeceased his father.
Donald Ray Morris (19 January 1888 – ? ) His original name was evidently McDonald, like his father, as he was listed as “McDonald R.” in the 1890 territorial census. That name was shortened, however, as he is simply “Donald” or “Don “ in every later record. According to the Guthrie Daily Leader he married Marion Hawes Perkins in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on 2 April 1907. Both were 19-year old students at Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts and had attempted to keep the marriage secret. He returned to Guthrie to work in the family hardware business in time to be listed in the 1908 city directory. He was living with his parents and his own family in subsequent directories and in both the 1910 and 1920 censuses. He filled out a World War I draft card in 1917 with his date of birth as above in Oxford, Kansas. The draft card describes him as having blue eyes and brown hair, of medium height and “stocky” in build. (It also indicates, under “military experience”, that he had attended secondary school at the Kenyon Military Academy in Ohio.) Two years after his father’s death, in June 1921, Don sold the hardware store in Guthrie and removed to the vicinity of his wife’s family on Cape Cod. The 1930 census enumerated him in Bourne, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, working as a traveling salesman in hardware. The 1940 census lists him as a hardware salesman living in the same house. wqqHis World War II draft registration card confirms his birth date and place, and describes him 5’10” tall and 230 pounds. It lists his occupation as a supplier for Biddle Hardware of Philadelphia. Censuses list three daughters: Flora Virginia Morris (1908-?) , Hildegard A. Morris (1911-?), and Mary Georgette Morris (1919-2000).
Kenneth R. Morris (November 1890 – 2 December 1914) He was living with his parents at 319 North Broad Street in the 1910 census, and city directories beginning in 1908 list him as a clerk in his father’s store. He passed away suddenly of peritonitis after being “in feeble health for some months.”46 One newspaper reported that he had had previous attacks, which he had intended to treat at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.47 He was unmarried. Kenneth R. Morris is buried with his father in the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie.
In 1942 he filed a civilian draft registration card listing a home address in Belmont but a mailing address in Portland, Maine, and giving his brother as a contact. He was in Hollywood, California by 1947, apparently still acting as an attorney.54 He died in Anaheim, California in 1969 and is buried in the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Huntington Beach along with his second wife, who died in 1987. Thomas and Catherine had five children before their divorce: Thomas Sherburne Morris (1917-1966), Margaret L. Morris (1919-1973), Kenneth E. Morris (1921-1965), Katherine A. Morris (1926-1972), and Joan A. Morris (1927-1970).
Mary Louise Morris (2 April 1866 – 28 January 1919) Her birth year is uncertain, both 1866 and 1867 given in different source documents, though the former seems more likely Born in Noble County, Ohio she moved as a child to Winfield. She was enumerated as “Louie” in 1870 and “M. Louie” in 1880, aged 4 and 14 respectively. (She was apparently double-counted in 1880, also listed in her sister Frances’s household.) Despite her youth, her occupation was listed as “music teacher” in 1880. In both the 1875 and the 1885 Kansas state censuses she was “Louie M.” Morris. She was referred to as “Lou Morris late of the Harper Daily Sentinel” (her brother-in-law’s newspaper) in 1887 when she arrived in Medicine Lodge.55 She was also listed as “Louie M. Morris” in the 1889-91 and 1893 Kansas City city directories, as a partner with her brother-in-law William Oran Graham in the printing firm Morris & Graham. The frontispiece of an essay authored by Graham called “The State of Kansas and Her Natural Resources”, published in 1890 by Morris & Graham, also lists her as “Miss Louie M. Morris”. She disappeared from individual listings in the city directories after 1893, but the printing firm continued to be listed as Morris & Graham in the 1894 and 1895 directories.
The 1900 and 1910 censuses for Noble County list her as “Louie” and “Louie M.” Wenner with her husband and three daughters named Wilda M. Wenner, Flora Wenner, and Frances L Wenner. Her husband was listed as a dealer in “books, paper, and lumber” in 1900 and as a hardware merchant in 1910. Sometime around 1915 they moved to Guthrie, where they lived just one block down Broad Street from McDonald Morris. All three daughters graduated from Guthrie High School. A photograph of the family taken about 1910 or so and posted at Ancestry by a descendant is located at this Ancestry page.
A report of Louie’s death after a lengthy illness, which called her “Mary Lou Wenner”, was carried in local newspapers. All three of her living siblings attended the funeral.58 Another newspaper reported that her death was “very sudden, presumably due to heart trouble.”59 There is a stone for her (with the erroneous birth year 1867) in the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie. Her husband briefly relocated to Oklahoma City, then moved back to Kansas City where he married again to a widow in 1925 and died in 1931.
Flora Wenner (9 June 1899 – 22 November 1960) She married Carl. D. Walton (1896-1971) in Kansas City on 5 October 1923. They were enumerated in Bakersfield, California in 1930 and in Los Angeles in 1940. Flora died in Las Vegas and was buried in the Palm Downtown Cemetery.
Frances L. Wenner (2 September 1905 – 6 December 1984) She married at 17 to George H. Riker in Kansas City by license dated 14 August 1923, her father giving permission. They were childless in the 1930 census, and divorced sometime in the next few years apparently after having moved to Denver, Colorado where her older sister lived. George Riker appears in 1940 as a divorced man in Los Angeles. Frances remarried to Edgar L. White on 29 May 1839 and lived out her life in Wyoming. She had one child, Jack Duane Riker, born in1831 who became part of her second family. She and her husband share a stone in the Crown HIll Cemetery in Park County, Wyoming.