 | | | | My name is <James Morgan> and I am the Site manager of this Web site.
My genealogy research is focused on William Morgan 1817 and his wife Lucy Cheatham 1820 Of Ava IL.If You can help your invited to contact me at jrm1302@gmail.com
Thank you for visiting Definition: Derived from the given
name Morgan, from "mor", the sea,
and "gan," born.
Surname Origin: Welsh William Morgan was born in Ava, Illinois in 1817, but we are not sure when his
people first came from Ireland to the U.S.A. After the War of 1812 the men of the military
were given land bounties in the Illinois Territory, possibly how Williams' family arrived in
Illinois.
We do know that Patrick Curran , was born in Ireland in 1813, who married
Catherine McCarthy, born in Ireland in 1825. They were the parents of Mary
Curran, who married William Morgan's son William "Thomas" Morgan (b.
1850 in Ava, Illinois) who was the father of my grandfather Michael Curran
Morgan (b. 1881 in Ava, Illinois). INTRODUCTION Floyd Thomas Morgan (1909 to 1953)&Bertha Elizabeth (nee Ferenbach) Morgan (1908 to 1998) Floyd Thomas Morgan, the father of the eleven children , was one of six children born to Michael Curran Morgan (1881-1958) and Ida May Shawen (1883-1934) of East St. Louis, Illinois. The first born, named Kenneth (Kenny), is said to have died shortly after childbirth, making Floyd the eldest of the five surviving siblings. His brothers and sisters, in subsequent birth order, were: Marguerite (nee Morgan) Fuller (1911- 1959); Michael (1913-1951); Edna May (nee Morgan) Daniels (1915- 1994); and Edward (1918- 1949). These five children were born over a nine year period, from 1909 to 1918, but four of them would die at fairly young ages from 1949 to 1959. Very little is known of the childhoods of Floyd and his siblings. We also know that his mother called him “my sunny boy”, which leads us to believe that Floyd was a happy child. He started working early in life, having finished only the fourth grade of public schooling. His first major job was for Western Union, in downtown St. Louis, where he rode a bicycle to deliver messages and telegrams. Eventually he was hired by the American District Telegraph (ADT) security company, initially as an armed responder to security alarms, and finally as a district supervisor. (In 1909 Western Union and ADT had become subsidiaries of AT&T.) We also know that his two brothers, Michael and Edward, worked as steamfitters in the East St. Louis area. As can be seen from the dates given above, Michael and Edward died while only in their 30s. Michael died of internal injuries sustained when he was struck by a car, and Edward died of pneumonia. Another two siblings died when only in their 40s. The father, Michael Curran Morgan, who lived until he was 77 years of age, outlived three of his five children. A fourth child, Marguerite, died of cancer just three months after he died. He also outlived his wife Ida May, by twenty-four years, as she died from a cerebral hemorrhage when just 50 years of age. She was also a diabetic during most of her adult life. The only one in the family to live at least as long as he did was his daughter Edna May, who lived until her 79th year. He died of pulmonary congestion of the lungs after years of suffering from heart disease. Production at the Armour Meat Company plant in East St. Louis, where he worked most of his life, officially shut down the year after he died.The one thing we know for sure about our dad’s early life is that he was hospitalized with a concussion and major head trauma when he was about twenty years of age. On his way to work one day, as he was in the process of getting off of a streetcar, his pants got snagged by an automobile that was trying to get around the streetcar, but got too close. As our mother reported the incident years later, in a letter to one of her children, she said: “The lady driving the car didn’t know she was dragging him along. People kept hollering at her to stop. She had no idea why. By the time she stopped he already had brain damage and was delirious for days. He only came out of the coma when his dear mother arrived at the hospital. She held his hand and said ‘sonny boy . . . sunny boy.’ Every one was amazed when he suddenly responded to her voice.”It was while he was recovering from his head wounds that our mother’s older sister, Mary (nee Ferenbach) Beil, introduced Bertha to Floyd. Joe Beil, Mary’s husband, was Floyd’s best friend at the time. Bertha was immediately attracted to Floyd because she thought he had such beautiful, big, brown eyes. Their relationship didn’t progress very far, though, because she had already decided she wanted to follow in the footsteps of the “Little Flower”, St. Theresa of Lisieux, by becoming a Carmelite Nun. Bertha was very religious, owing in no small part to the influence of her mother, Katherina (nee Allgaier) Ferenbach. (1870-1945). Her mother brought her strong Roman Catholic faith with her when she immigrated to America from the Black Forest area of Germany in 1893, when she was just twenty-three years of age. She definitely needed the strength of that faith as she set out to begin her new life. She made the trans-Atlantic journey, on her own, at the request of Karl Albert Ferenbach (1857-1928), a struggling young farmer who also emigrated from the Black Forest area of Germany. He was twenty-three years of age when his ship, the St. Laurent, arrived in New York on June 1st, 1881. He settled in Fieldon, Illinois, which was a popular destination for immigrant German farmers at that time. Not much is known about his first wife, Augusta Schmoeller (1863-1886), except that they were married on November 17, 1883, and she died just three years later when she was only twenty-three years old. When she died she left Albert with a six months old infant, whom they had named Karl Gustav (1885-1903). One can only assume that Augusta’s family lived in the vicinity and was able to help the relatively young widower with the raising of his young son. Their marriage license states that both Albert and Augusta lived in the Fieldon area.It’s not clear when or how often Albert wrote to Katherina Allgaier, or when he asked if she would be willing to join him in raising his child in his new homeland. What is known is that that son was already five years old by the time Katherina consented. It’s also unclear how Albert knew her well enough to make such a proposal, as she was only eleven years old when he left Germany for America. It’s probably safe to assume that he knew her family fairly well, and that he corresponded with them and then with her over a period of years before she was old enough and adventurous enough to throw caution to the wind. She married Albert on September 7, 1893, just seven months after her ship, the Slavonia, arrived in New York on February 18, 1893. He was 35 years of age and she 23 when they got married. Over a twenty-one year period they eventually raised an additional nine children of their own. Katherina actually bore eleven children during this time span, but three of them died in infancy or not long after. The eldest of their surviving daughters was Mary (1902-1992), and the youngest was Bertha (1908-1998), whom Katherina had named after her favorite sister back in Germany. The other surviving siblings were: Ernest (1894-1977), John (1897-1918), Francis (1900-1982), Theresa (1905-2002), Joseph (1911-1990), and Robert (1915-1996). Before Bertha entered the convent to nurture the seeds of a religious vocation most assuredly planted in her by her mother, she did have at least one date with the young Floyd Thomas Morgan. It was while on that date that she told him that if she ever did get married, the man she married would have to have at least two thousand dollars in the bank. One can understand such a desire from a young lady who grew up in relative poverty on a family farm near Jerseyville, Illinois, but one can only marvel at her prescience. The stock market crash of 1929 occurred the very next year.Bertha entered the Carmelite Monastery in St. Louis when she was twenty years of age, but her stay there lasted only two years. She had assumed that devoting herself to the religious life would mean that she could spend a majority of her time praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the monastery chapel. Her assumption proved wrong. In fact, she was allowed very little time to pray in the chapel. Instead she was required to clean floors and do other domestic tasks like cooking and baking and doing dishes. She had also assumed that the religious community she was entering would be characterized by love and kindness. This assumption proved wrong as well. In fact, she was required to wear not only different but a poorer quality of clothing than that worn by the other postulants, and made to feel as though she was actually a servant to the others postulants. So she decided to practice her faith in a less demeaning way. Soon after Bertha left the convent, her sister Mary once again invited her to her home. And, once again, the young Floyd Morgan was waiting there to see her. Amazingly, even though two years had passed, Floyd still had to wear a white hat to protect the still healing wound on the back of his head. The very presence of this skull cap indicated just how slowly his head wound was healing. Neither of them knew at the time that this head wound would eventually lead to his untimely death just twenty years later. Nor did they know, at that time, that the two of them would bring eleven children into this world during that twenty year period. One thing they did know for certain was that Floyd had not saved up that two thousand dollars which Bertha thought she deserved from any man who wanted to marry her. He explained to her that he was convinced she would remain in the convent, and therefore he spent the only money he was able to save buying new furniture for his mother. She figured that anyone who would do something so wonderful for his mother, especially during those Depression years, must be pretty special. The rest is Morgan Family history.Their wedding took place on June 4, 1932, at the Church of the Holy Ghost in Jerseyville, Illinois. They were both twenty-three years of age at the time, although he was eight months her junior. After the wedding they drove fifteen miles south to Alton, Illinois, to have their picture taken by a professional photographer. They got married during the Great Depression, and didn’t have much money for a honeymoon, but they were able to borrow a relative’s car for one week. In essence, their honeymoon consisted of their driving from one relative to another as they continued the celebration of their marriage. At night they stayed at the Ferenbach homestead, which gave Floyd’s mother-in-law the opportunity to play a practical joke on him. While he and his bride were out making the rounds visiting his new relatives, Katerina crawled under the wedding couple’s bed and tied a cowbell to the springs beneath the mattress. Grandmother Ferenbach always looked so serious whenever pictures were taken of her. Obviously she had a less serious side that was not readily captured by the cameras. The first child of Floyd and Bertha was born nine months and twenty days later. It was the first of many children to come, but none of them would have been born if Bertha had followed her doctor’s orders. He told her that because of her physical condition, the nature of which he never explained to her satisfaction, a second pregnancy would threaten her life. He told her that she and Floyd needed to practice birth control. The “rhythm” method of birth control was the only option available to them as Roman Catholics, and as Floyd exclaimed to the doctor when he learned that Bertha was pregnant again: “Rhythm doesn’t work!” In fact, as each of their children can bear witness, “rhythm” didn’t work a total of eleven times for them. In addition to the eleven children they raised during their time together, Floyd and Bertha had another pregnancy that never came to term. It was an ectopic (i.e., outside the womb) pregnancy that occurred between what were the seventh and eighth full term births, and it was the closest Bertha came to that grave prediction given by her doctor following her very first delivery.We seven Morgan children at the time were too young to know or understand what effects this medical emergency was having on our mother. Even as late as the 1970s, ectopic tubal pregnancies were difficult to diagnose and a very common cause of maternal mortality. We didn’t know how lucky we were that our mother survived the operation to remove the ruptured Fallopian Tube, or how unlucky we were that full recovery from the operation would take months. Blood banking, a resource that would have helped speed recovery, had not yet come into common medical usage. Since our mother was in the hospital, and our dad needed to go to work every day, someone needed to take care of us children. The oldest of us was only eight years of age, and the youngest just nine months at the time. The solution was to place us in the German St. Vincent Orphanage in midtown St. Louis, for at least a month, during our mother’s stay in the hospital and her subsequent recuperation at home. This was the only respite from full-time motherhood that Bertha would have for the next thirty years of her life. None of us can remember her ever taking time off to recharge her batteries, even for a weekend. Some of us do recall one occasion, not long before he died, when our dad was able to get away for a week-long fishing trip with some of his friends from work. Other than that, both of our parents were year-round full-time parents. We kids never had a family vacation. |
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