Tag Archives: Hattie Morgan Stout

Mother’s Death Causes Family Conflict–A Letter from Will Stout

The Cast of Characters in a Family Conflict

William Morgan Stout (1873-1944) intrigues me. He seemed to attract family conflict.

Ancestor Great Uncle William Morgan Stout (1938) 65 years old.

I don’t believe I ever saw Will Stout. If I did meet him on one of his brief visits to Killbuck Ohio, I was too young to remember. My great-uncle, older brother of my grandmother Vera Stout Anderson, lived in New York City during the Gilded Age.

Recently I found a letter that he wrote to my grandmother, Vera Stout Anderson in 1937. This one letter to my grandmother is the only thing that I have in his own handwriting. It nicely fills in the personality of my elusive great-uncle Will.

The People You Need to Know

Will Stout

Very little factual information about Will Stout survives, but you can read more about him in “Ancestor Tracking: Great Uncle Bill Stout. For instance, it took me years to discover that he died in Palm Beach Florida rather than New York or New Jersey. I expected to find him still near his relatives in New Jersey in the 1940s. I only recently was able to uncover Will and Jean’s marriage record. There I learned her last name and that she was a widow rather than a divorcee.

He did not quite have the distinguished career that my mother described as “a railroad attorney”. Nevertheless Will lived in magical Manhattan during the Gilded Age. Actually, he was one of many lawyers who worked for the New York street car company, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company.

Will’s Early Life

Will was born June 25, 1873, the oldest of three children of “Doc” William Stout and “Hattie” Morgan Stout.

Will left Killbuck Ohio for school in upstate New York, and then law school in New York City after his father Dr. William Stout nearly disowned him for what Doc Stout saw as dissolute living. This may have been the first of his involvements in family conflict. His life turned far away from small town Mid Western living and values. He married a widow several years older than he was. She had a daughter who he reportedly adopted, but the couple never had children of their own.

The Interborough Rapid Transit Company Letterhead

The Interborough Rapid Transit Company opened the first New York subway line in October 1904. Previously, they owned the first elevated lines (The El). The city bought the IRT in 1940, and the IRT originally ran the subway lines that today are the numbered lines in the subway system. In 1929, Will would have been working for the company when they took a fare increase appeal to the Supreme Court. They asked to raise their fares from the 1904 rate of five cents to seven cents. They lost, which probably played into the end of the company in 1940.

When he wrote the letter to his sister Vera in 1937, Will still struggled because of the Great Depression. His company had some serious problems, which probably kept their army of attorneys quite busy.

Maude Stout Bartlett

Maude Bartlett at Stout-Anderson house, Killbuck (c.1952)

No one every used my great-aunt Maude’s real name, Mary Emeline Stout (1875-1963) (“See Aunt Maude Bartlett Entertains a Queen”). From family letters and the family picture, I suspect that Hattie Stout favored Maude above her other children. This made perfect sense because Maude was studious, well-behaved, musical–all the things that my rambunctious grandmother and rebellious great-uncle were not. In this picture you see Maude standing at Hattie’s shoulder and Vera beside her father, while Will sits alone.

Dr. William Stout and family in front of family home, circa 1885

Maude married at the age of 23 to Carlos Bartlett, and not long after their marriage, the couple moved to Buffalo, New York. She lived a social life their, filled with books and music and entertaining.

Sadly, Carlos died in 1915 at the age of 42. For the rest of her life, Maude mourned her “dear Carlos.” She remained in Buffalo, took in a boarder and taught piano lessons, until in the 1950s she moved back to Killbuck, Ohio. She and my grandmother Vera had a prickly relationship, (more family conflict). Though as my mother said, they still cared for each other. They lived at opposite ends of the small town, about 1/2 mile apart. In their later years, they called each other on the phone on days they could not visit.

When Will wrote the letter to Vera in 1937, Maude was still living in Buffalo with an Englishman boarding in her upstairs to supplement Carlos’ Railroad Stocks pension.

Vera Stout Anderson

I have written extensively about my namesake grandmother. In 1937 when she received Will’s letter, she and my grandfather Guy were running a restaurant in their home. The picture at the head of Ancestors in Aprons is the Anderson Restaurant. A short time before the restaurant opened, they had been running a boarding house.

Vera Had Her Own Troubles

When Vera received Will’s letter, Guy may have already been showing signs of the heart trouble that forced them to close the restaurant in the early 1940s.

In 1937, Vera and Guy’s youngest son Herbert had married ten years earlier when he was 19, and already had four children. Her oldest child, William J. Anderson had one child. Her daughter, Harriette, was dating a man she did not entirely approve of. In other words she had troubles of her own.

Harriette (Hattie) Morgan Stout, the Mother

Hattie Stout and Maude Bartlett in Buffalo Circa 1910

I have written about Hattie Stout (1842-1928) who was a school teacher during the Civil War. She was a woman who was widely read and curious about everything. She explored life to the fullest. My mother said that she even smoked a cigarette in the teens when women were expressing new-found freedoms, just to see what it was like. Her desire was to live long enough to vote, and she did indeed live to see Woman’s Suffrage.

Hattie served as her husband Doc Stout’s assistant, keeping the house and his instruments spotless. She even took care of patients who had to stay in the Stout home in Killbuck for a brief time while they recovered from some illness. The couple loved to travel, and Hattie accompanied her husband to medical conventions, went to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and also visited her son in Manhattan and rode on a double-decker bus.

When Doc Stout died in 1910, Hattie had Vera’s husband take over managing the farms she inherited. She moved into a small house so that they could occupy the large house Doc Stout had built in the center of town.

The End of Hattie’s Life

Hattie visited Maude in Buffalo after Carlos died. By 1920, her health failing at age 78, she had moved to Buffalo to live with Maude. She died in Maude’s home in 1928 at the age of 85.

Hattie Stout Death Certificate Cause of Death, 1928

The family story ran that Hattie had turned away from the medicine practiced by her late husband Dr. William Stout and her belief in some alternative treatment contributed to her death. When her son Will Stout wrote a letter to her daughter Vera in 1937, Hattie had been dead ten years, but he was still angry.

I was curious about her cause of death. Because she was in New York State, I had to pay $18 and then wait about 9 months before I received the copy of the death certificate. I have more to say about the cause of death, shown above, in a little bit.

The 1937 Letter from Will Stout to His Sister Vera

Here’s an image of the first page of the four-page letter that Will sent to his sister on April 22, 1937, revealing another family conflict involving Will. As you can see, it is not the easiest handwriting to transcribe, but I have transcribed pertinent parts of the letter below. Here you can see the name of the company he worked for.

Letter from Will Stout to Vera Anderson, 1937, page one

…she is impossible it seems to me, & the six weeks or so that I indured (sic) during Mother’s Illness, was sufficient for a lifetime.

Dear Vera & Family,

[ He opens with a response to a recent letter and the fact Vera had not written frequently, which worried his wife. He goes on to complain about his financial circumstances. That may have seemed a bit strange to his much poorer relatives. After all, they did not live in a big city and have a job as lawyer with a large corporation!]

Fortunately for my peace of mind we have been very busy here in the office and have had little time to worry about being the under dog.

It will not be long now when we will be completing our plans for our vacation which as usual I hope to take in August. So far our idea is to drive to Ohio for a day or so & then skip back to a little cottage on a nice little lake upstate where we were for 3 wks last year. It is very unpretentious, very quiet, & cheap & the best place for complete relaxation & rest that we have found yet, so if nothing happens to disrupt our programme (sic) We will start the last Friday or Saturday in July & ought to be in Killbuck the following Monday & Tuesday Aug. 2^nd or 3^rd, but don’t make extra plans for us we can not stay long for which you should be thankful,

[Here Will mentions possible visits to relatives along the way]

… the time will be short enough, in fact too short so that we will get ourselves disliked all along the line, but that seems to be the best we can do for I have engaged our cottage starting the 10^th of Aug. & so what we are thinking of doing before that date means that we will have to hustle.

[Then he gets to the matter of avoiding his sister Maude. I have bolded the significant statements.]

I don’t suppose you know what Maud is going to do this summer as yet. So when you find out let me know. I have not heard from her in year and I don’t intend to have any Part of my vacation disturbed by a possible scrap, so if she is going to be at Killbuck the 1^st week—Aug that will change our plans Of course if she is in Buffalo when we drive thru I will stop & say hello. But that will be all as I recall it she was not at Home the last time we stopped and I suspect she was just as pleased as we were. The last time we did see her she never asked us in the House. But that is all right by me, I am not mad about it & Jean [his wife] is very sorry for her & about the whole thing & gave me fits for not trying to placate her but she is impossible it seems to me, & the six weeks or so that I indured (sic) during Mother’s Illness, was sufficient for a lifetime. That is enough of that, So don’t fail to let me know when she will be if you learn.

Aside from a few colds & minor bellyaches we have faired (sic) very well physically, & I can think of nothing else by way of news. We are looking forward to seeing you & those wonderful kids that a doting Grandmother is crazy about.

Don’t wait so long in finding time to write again.

Love to all

Jean & Will

What Happened in 1928?

Particularly, what happened in Buffalo during that “six weeks or so” that Will refers to? Of course we will never know for sure. But thanks to the doctor who signed the death certificate on January 24, 1928, we know that Hattie died of Diabetes Mellitus (commonly called just diabetes). According to the certificate, she had suffered from Diabetes for twelve years. That was not a particular surprise, as diabetes crops up in several generations in my family. My grandmother (Hattie’s daughter), my sister and one of my sons all have been diagnosed and treated for diabetes.

The most common modern treatment for diabetes, insulin, began to be used in the early 1920s, so would have been available to Hattie. Read History of treatment of diabetes here. (U. S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) Did she feel that insulin injections were unnatural? Did she prefer to use some alternative treatment, like the treatment with high fat diet,(article from Journal of Diabetes and Metabolism) which had some supporters at that time? Was she afraid of needles? Or did she, as my family suspected, join a religion that forbade medical treatment?

When I saw on this death certificate “Contributory” [cause of death] as gangrene of the foot I thought of another possibility. The most common recommendation to deal with the gangrene would be amputation of the foot. She might, understandably, be reluctant to lose her foot, and refused treatment. So perhaps it was the infection that killed her.

The Death Certificate

A minor point: her birth date is given as August 4, 1842 on the death certificate, and date of death is January 24, 1928. The calculation that she was 85 year, 4 months and 20 days old therefore is slightly off.

One more mystery popped up when I read the death certificate. I mentioned earlier that Hattie had been living with Maude in 1920. However, he death certificate says that she has only lived at that address for four months. Either she had changed her address back and forth from Buffalo to Killbuck, or the census had caught her just visiting in 1920. In that case, she didn’t actually live with Maude until later. So why would she go to Buffalo in October of 1927?

Presumably Hattie was quite ill by that time. Travel away from home would be difficult, even though she was fleeing to be with her favorite daughter. The only logical reason I can think of for the trip would be to receive some kind of alternative treatment not available in Ohio.

Whatever reason she had, it is clear from Will Stout’s letter that he was present in Buffalo when his mother died. He argued with Maude (and presumably his mother) about Hattie’s treatment. I can picture the New York attorney descending upon the two ladies at 16 Robie Avenue, ready to take charge. He was, after all, an attorney–used to arguing. However, from what I know of Maude, she could be very determined. She may have decided to go along with their mother’s decision about her illness. If so, she would dig her heels in and her older brother would hold no sway. And as we can clearly see, Will lost the argument. His mother lost her life. However, William M. Stout signed the death certificate, listing his address as 537 West 149th Street, NY City. (According to current real estate site, built in 1910, in an area near Riverside Drive and Broadway called Hamilton Heights, a northern portion of Harlem. Many of the buildings still show the decorative touches of the Gilded Age.)

I am glad to have this glimpse into the personality of William Morgan Stout. However, I am sorry that it is a letter that reveals a family conflict. Despite his wife’s gentle admonitions, Will did not seem to be one to easily forgive. On the other hand, judging from her refusing to invite him into her house, neither was his sister Maude.

A Slice of My Life: Home Sewn

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Hattie Morgan’s sampler, Age 12 (circa 1854)

This pretty piece of needlework has challenged me ever since my mother first showed it to me. Young girls showed off their needlework skills in samplers like this. “Sampler” because the girl stitched samples of several different kinds of embroidery stitches, in addition to showing off her knowledge of the alphabet and counting, and perhaps a memorized Bible verse as well. This piece introduced me to the joy and skill of home sewn.

The sampler says:

Prefer solid sense to vain will. Let usefulness and benificence direct the train of your pursuits.

When you mean to do a good action, do not deliberate upon it. When you are about doing a dishonorable act, consider what the world will think of you when it is completed.

Tis virtue sweetens all our toils/ With joy our labor crowns/Gives pleasure when our fortune smiles/and courage when it frowns.

[I actually Googled that last little poem and got no hits, but it is oh so typical of Victorian virtuous poetry.

This particular sampler was made by my great-grandmother, Harriet (Hattie) Morgan, then about twelve years old.

I felt like an underachiever compared to Hattie when I started practicing embroidery , but I determined not to let down the female line of my family. At a very young age, mother taught me some plain stitches. In Girl Scouts, I had sewn a “sit-upon”–a pillow to carry for outdoors activities. My grandma Vera had taught me to sew on buttons (and how to properly hang clothes on the line to dry outside. ) In eighth grade, I signed up for a 4-H group where I could learn sewing, and began making basic home sewn items like aprons and pot holders.

Side note: I would NOT take home economics in high school because my mother taught it and that would be the ultimate embarrassment. Much worse than wearing home sewn clothes.

The Singer Sewing Machines

I learned all the tricks I could do with my mother’s old featherweight Singer portable sewing machine. She got it in the 40s and used it for 30 or more years. I still have it in storage, but haven’t tried out the portable Singer for many, many years.

That portable electric Singer was a big step up from the first sewing machine that I used–my grandmother’s pedal sewing machine. How I wish I still had THAT machine! I remember the fancy gold trim–which is also a feature on the portable electric.

Singer table model pedal sewing machine 1920s Picture from ebay.

Because these treadle machines were first marketed around the turn of the century, it is quite possible that my great-grandmother Hattie Morgan Stout had been the first owner of Grandma’s sewing machine. If so, she might have used it to slightly speed up the work of making the incredible crazy quilt, she created with her mother-in-law,Emeline Stout, one of my great-great grandmothers. It looks to me as though the pieces were stitched by machine, but then decorated with the fancy embroidery stitches.

Crazy quilt pillow by Emeline Stout

Of course I had no idea of this possible history when I was pumping away on the treadles in Grandma’s big kitchen. She would not have mentioned it because my Grandmother was not one to dwell in the past. Although my Grandmother (and my great-grandmother) loved everything new, other people did not immediately embrace the new machine for sewing.

It was also thought that women might be too excitable and perhaps not quite bright enough to manage such a complicated instrument. In addition there were concerns that women would go wild and spend their days shopping, playing cards with friends and who knows what else if they no longer had to spend much of their time making bedding and clothing.

For more about the early history of the sewing machine, see the source of this quote.

With the benefit of hindsight, we know how those predictions turned out. Women indeed , no longer spend their time making bedding and clothing!

Making Home Sewn Clothes

From potholders and aprons, I progressed to making some of my own home sewn clothes, inspired by the pictures on the pattern envelopes and beautiful materials.

It had been popular for sewing for a long time. So much so that the smart flour mills competed to print pretty patterns on their flour sacks. And by the time I started sewing in the 50’s you could buy the material without the flour. I made gathered skirts from that lovely soft cloth and also made a peasant blouse with a neckline that could be worn off the shoulder–which I wouldn’t dare to do (blush!), and elastic gathered puffy sleeves.

Fortunately, gathered skirts were in style. The home sewn versions were so easy to whip up and the material was so cheap that I could make them in many different patterns and colors.

The Red Dress

During high school, I continued to make clothes for myself from time to time. I particularly remember a red dress with white collar and cuffs. Since this is a black and white picture, you’ll have to take my word for it that the dress was RED. That’s me as a high school freshman on the far left, one of my best friends, my father, my mother, and in front, my little sister.

Easter Picture. Vera Marie Kaser (Badertscher), Nancy Martin (Orr), Paul Kaser, Harriette Kaser, Paula Kaser , 1953

This picture illustrates some fashion notes of the 1950s. I accessorized my home-made dress with a very trendy elastic waist-cincher belt. Although I had splurged on new wedge sandals for Easter, my girlfriend wears the teen uniform of the day for feet–saddle shoes. My little sister wears white socks with her Mary Janes. My mother’s dress looks like it is one of the factory-made materials so popular after World War II–nylon or rayon perhaps. Our long skirt length came into style in opposition to the short, fabric-saving skirts women wore during the war. By the fifties, fashion had turned to the New Look, which meant lowered hemlines.

I am surprised that my father is wearing his shirt tail out and no suit or sports jacket, since we were coming from church and he usually dressed more formally. My frizzy hair did not come naturally–it comes to you courtesy of Toni home permanents, the cheap beauty shop perms alternative that left the house smelly for a week.

Fifty years after this picture was taken, I learned that I was not the only one who remembered the red dress. The man who had been my very first boyfriend showed up at my mother’s funeral. As we chatted about the old days, he said that he remembered seeing me in a red dress and thinking it was the prettiest thing he had ever seen! Of course he didn’t say that at the time when I saw myself as an ugly duckling, with my home sewn dress and ridiculous home perm. If only we could know some of the good things going on around us when we are young and insecure.

Sewing as a Young Housewife

When I went off to college, I took a recess from sewing. After I married and had three little boys, I took it up again. It was not out of necessity, but out of an urge to do something more creative than cook formula and baby food and deal with diapers. After I tucked the boys in for the night, I would pull out my latest yardage of beautiful material, unfold the tissue paper patterns and get to work. Because I hated to stop before finishing a project ,I once took a night and the following day to sew a taffeta skirt and jacket with matching silk blouse. I wore it to a wedding the following day. I also made formal wear, like this long blue satin gown I’m wearing–along with big hair–in this picture from the late 60s. Yep, still wearing white gloves!

Blue dress source of border for crazy quilt

That’s me in the blue satin dress in the middle of the front row. Scottsdale Jr. Woman’s Club 1967

I fashioned one of my favorites projects, a very short dress (hemlines had jumped up in the late sixties,) from a piece of heavy silk that my brother brought me from Vietnam. He served in that country during the war.

I might have made clothes for a little girl, but since I had boys, I felt no temptation to try sewing their uniform of sturdy pants and t-shirts. However, I get points for making home sewn costumes for Halloween.

Halloween 1966 Gypsey Mike and Ken Rabbit

A new house called for learning to make drapes and curtains. One year I made home sewn aprons as Christmas presents for everyone in my extended family.

Inevitably, I also went through my crewel embroidery phase and my needlepoint phase, and some pieces from those periods surface now and then. Although I dreamed of replicating great-grandmother Hattie’s sampler, that has yet to happen.

Turning away from sewing when the boys were older, I moved on to various other pursuits. But I will never forget the sense of accomplishment that comes with putting together a whole garment, or learning a new skill like pleating or making buttonholes. I now knew how to secure those buttons that my grandmother had taught me to sew on so many years before.

Charles Morgan and Two Ironies of Place

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Jesse Morgan left five children behind when he took off for California in 1849. One was my great-grandmother, Hariett (Hattie) Morgan (Stout), whose mother Mary was Jesse’s second wife. The other four, including the eldest Charles Morgan, were from his first marriage. It seemed only fair that I tell what I know about these other children of Jesse Morgan before I finish his story.

What Happened to Jesse Morgan’s First Four Children?

My mother thought that both sons had gone to live with relatives, but I discovered that although that was the case with the oldest son, Charles, the second son, Carlos, working on a farm in Holmes County in 1850.

The two girls, however, did live in Killbuck, and would have been part of the family drama of Jesse’s comings and goings. My mother passed on stories from my grandmother that indicated that the two daughters were close to their half-sister Hattie and made the long trip from Colorado to visit her. Jesse’s children with Mary Pelton were:

Charles (June 20 1830-February 11, 1916)
Carlos (1832-1899)
Louisa ( October 1833-1909)
Malvina (April 1835-1917)
A fifth child, a son named John, died as an infant in Killbuck, Ohio when Jesse’s first wife also died about 1838.

What I Learned about Charles Morgan

From knowing almost nothing about the oldest child, Charles Morgan (Charley), I have gained a very complete picture of his life, as he moved frequently, married, farmed and became a Civil War soldier and outlived all his immediate family. The nagging question I have about all four of these children is how much contact Jesse had with them after his first wife died. I found an intriguing coincidence in Charles history that hints they may have been in touch.

Little Charles Morgan “Orphaned”

Charles was born in Chautauqua New York and was only eight years old when his mother died. He had to make the journey from Ohio back to Chautauqua County New York where he lived with his maternal grandparents Ruel and Lucy Pelton. Charles went to school in Sherman, New York through the eighth grade. Public high schools were not common then, and the family probably did not feel a high school education at a private academy was necessary for a boy who was fated to be a farmer.

His grandparents were aging, and by 1850 they had moved in with their son, also named Charles. They took young Charles (now 20) with them. There he shared the household with his aunt and uncle and their two young children until he married the 19-year-old Miranda Leach in 1859.

Irony #1: Charles Morgan Starts His Own Family and Moves to Illinois

I do not have the exact marriage date of Charles and Miranda, but their daughter Vavian was born in October 1859, probably at home. Charles and Miranda were living with Miranda’s mother, Mary Leach when the 1860 census taker came around in June, 1860. There is no mention in later censuses of the first daughter Vavian, so I have to assume that she died in childhood.

In 1862, Charles and Miranda moved to Coral in McHenry County, Illinois, where they had a second daugther, Vietta. This move intrigues me, as I mentioned earlier. Jesse Morgan purchased property in Crystal Lake, McHenry County some time before 1845. The property that he bought and then sold to his friend “Doc” Woods in 1847 also lies in McHenry County. Coral, Charles home, an unincorprated community, lies just sixteen miles east of Crystal Lake. Could Jesse have given that land he bought in the 1840s (which I am still trying to track down) to his son Charles at some time before Jesse’s death? Or had they been in touch either when Jesse was traveling or by letter, so that Charles knew about Jesse’s high regard for the farmland of northern Illinois?

Charles Morgan Goes to War

At 34, barely settled into his new home in Illinois, Charles leaves his 24-year-old wife and their toddler daughter to join the Union Army. The 95th Illinois Regiment, largely made up of McHenry County men, had already been through some tough fighting and probably used a two-month furlough period to recruit reinforcements from home. Charles joined the Infantry as a private on October 3, 1864. If you want to know about the action he might have seen–and there was a lot for the 95th Regiment, you can see the Illinois Adjutant General’s Report here.

The army gave Charles an honorable discharge just eight months later, on June 12, 1865, just two months before the regiment was disbanded. He returned to his home in Coral, Illinois but the 1880 census reports he was sick on the day of the census. His daughter, Vietta, 18, was still living at home, but in 1884 she married Frank Wood and by 1887 they had moved to Fern Valley, Iowa.

Charles Morgan Moves to Iowa

Charles and his wife Miranda moved to Fern Valley along with Vietta and her husband. Miranda died in 1893, and 1895 and 1900 census reports show Charles living with Vietta and her six children. A picture of Vietta from a family tree on Ancestry.com shows that although she dressed impressively (love the hat!), she was definitely not the looker in the family.

Vietta Morgan, daughter of Charles Morgan. Photo from Ancestry tree of mives 2680

At 74, Charles married a second time– to a woman named Ida. The 1905 Iowa census and the 1910 Federal census shows them together, however Ida was no longer living in 1915. So Charles was two times a widow at 80 or so. For the first time, he is listed as Charley on the census instead of Charles. (Thanks to the 1910 census, I know that Ida was born in Ohio in 1844–14 years after Charles–and she had six living children. All those children had left home by the time Ida married Charles.) I know very little about Ida (like her maiden name or first married name), but I do know that she and Charles were fated to be married less than ten years.

Charles Takes a Second Wife and Becomes a Double Widower

Not only did Charles’ second wife die between 1910 and 1915, but his younger sister Louisa died in 1909 and his only daughter moved to Turlock, California in 1910. After Vietta moved to California, she died there in 1911 when she was only 48 years old. Four serious blows to Charles Morgan in less than six years.

Irony #2: Charles Morgan Goes to California at the End of Life

Although Charles filled out the Iowa Census card in 1915 stating that he had been living in Iowa for 28 years, and was a retired farmer, Civil War veteran and widower at the age of 84, he apparently decided to join his son-in-law and grandchildren in California soon after he filled out that information. He had almost no one else. The man who had been virtually orphaned at eight had outlived his brother and one of his sisters, two wives and two daughters and his remaining sister was ailing in Colorado. He had only grandchildren left for family.

He died in Modesto, California on February 11, 1916. His grave is marked by a stone honoring his service in the Union Army. Ironically, Charles Morgan is buried less than 75 miles away from where his father had been shot and killed 66 years before.

Charles Mogan’s gravestone in Modesto California. Photo by Bette Locke at Find a Grave.

The next child of Jesse Morgan I sketch is Carlos Morgan, Jesse’s second son-– his westward trek and his beautiful wife.

How I am Related

Vera Marie Kaser Badertscher is the daughter of
Harriette Anderson Kaser, who is the daughter of
Vera Stout Anderson, who is the daughter of
Harriette (Hattie) Morgan Stout, who is the daughter of
Jessie Morgan and Mary Bassett Morgan.
Jessie Morgan with his first wife Mary Pelton is the father of
Charles Morgan

Notes on Research

United States Federal Census 1840 (Sherman, Chautauqua, New York), 1850 (Sherman, Chautauqua, New York), 1860 (Mina, Chautaqua, New York), 1870 (Coral, McHenry, Illinois), 1880 (Coral, McHenry, Illinois), 1900 (Fern Valley, Palo Alto, Iowa), 1910 (Fern Valley Palo, Iowa)

Iowa State Census 1905 (Fern Valley, Palo Alto, Iowa), 1915 (Rodman, Palo Alto, Iowa)

California, Death Index, 1905-1939, Ancestry.com, 2013, Surnames L-R, pg 7622 Charles Morgan

James Morgan and his Descendants, North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000, Ancestry.com 2016.

U.S. Find a Grave, Chas. Morgan,

National Park Service Soldiers and Sailors Data Base

National Park Service 95th Regiment Illinois Infantry

Illinois Adjutant General Report on 95th Regiment