Reliving history
All in the family
Reece Jones Morgan and his family moved from Kentucky to Prairie Creek in
1829, beginning a long line of Morgans in the Wabash Valley who on Monday
held their 100th-anniversary reunion
By Tammy Ayer
Tribune-Star
Early Thursday afternoon, Nathan Pence practiced his lines and rolled his Rs
in hopes of effecting a brogue. Nearby, 86-year-old Joe Morgan chatted with
others at the head table, and a grinning baby crawled across the floor.
Once again, members of the Morgan family gathered for their annual
Thanksgiving reunion dinner, this time at the U.S. Penitentiary training
center on an unusually warm and sunny November day.
This year, though, it had been 100 years since family members started the
annual holiday event: 100 years since Ogle Morgan shot a wild goose and his
father, Homer Cassius Morgan, invited the entire family over for a feast.
Thus, the necessity for the brogue.
As he glanced at the piece of paper with his lines and rolled his Rs, Pence
prepared for his role in a skit about the Morgan family's history in Vigo
County since 1829, a history that began with Reece Morgan whom Pence
portrayed when he emigrated from Wales to Virginia.
Son's early successes
Relatives are unsure when Reece Morgan made that trip, but they know he had
a son named Reece Jones Morgan, who was born in 1773 in Virginia or
Kentucky. That son married in 1801 in Kentucky, making the move to Indiana
in 1829 because land in Indiana was cheap.
He came up the Wabash River from Kentucky to Prairie Creek . . . on a raft,
noted 74-year-old Ralph Morgan of Prairie Creek. They decided it looked
pretty good there, so they turned into Prairie Creek.
That decision proved a good one for Reece Jones Morgan, his wife Lucretia
and eight children. One son, Valentine Morgan, enjoyed even greater success
as a farmer and trader and lawyer, building a grand, two-story mansion with
big pillars and a spiral staircase about two miles north of Prairie Creek.
The house passed out of the family when Valetine's widow, Frances Ann
Thompson Morgan, discovered her husband's heavy debt from extensive land
purchases and sold it to clear the debt. The house eventually burned.
Valentine Morgan's oldest son, Cassius Homer Morgan, later built his own
house, which is still standing. Born in 1845, he attended Merom Union
Christian College for one term, taught in a local school, farmed, settled
disagreements between neighbors thanks to his law education and served one
term as a Republican in the state House of Representatives, in 1897.
He also ran a general store in Prairie Creek, built a kiln to make clay
drain tiles and bricks and taught his second wife, Lida, how to sign her
name, because she had only three months of school.
Examining mementos
Family members learned all that and more during the skit Thursday and later
during a tour of Morgan landmarks. They could also admire the pearl buttons
from Lida Morgans wedding dress, the carved amber buttons from her
second-day dress and a special glass float cup used at her reception.
Nearby sat a deep, octagon-shaped glass dish the salt box brought from Wales
by Reece Morgan. The chipped and scratched dish, decorated simply on the
bottom, occupies a place of honor in the china cabinet of Mary Morgan of
Indianapolis, 84, the family historian and one of several at the head table.
When the annual Thanksgiving reunion dinner began, Homer Morgan hosted it
until 1924, the year his wife died, and 1925 two years the dinner didn't
happen. After that break, family members began meeting in other homes in
1926, outgrowing those homes around 1930 and then meeting in the Prairie
Creek Eastern Star hall and the Saddle Club in 1972. They met in homes for
several years after that, always enjoying euchre, checkers or another game.
This year, 67 people attended, some from as far as Florida and California.
This is my 57th one, said Mary K. Morgan Goodson, 79, of Cypress, Calif.
There were a couple in there where the weather kept us in, and one where we
had the flu.
And then there was the one in 1945 where she had to leave her husband,
Frank, in Blackstone, Va., after he was drafted. She caught a train and
arrived in Terre Haute before noon on Thanksgiving. The couple married in
1942; she had attended the year before.
When you're invited, its serious. You're expected to be a member of the
family, said Morgan, who met her husband at 4-H camp in Jasonville when he
was an ag teacher and she was a 4-H leader.
Most dressed up for the event, with some even in suits; Ralph Morgan noted
that when he was a child, everyone wore their Sunday best. Some even
received new suits just for the gathering.
You may not stay clean very long, but you started that way, he said.
Mary Goodson smiled as she looked around the room of people, away from a
display of family pictures, and commented on the Morgan Thanksgiving
tradition. I think its remarkable. I think the loyalty of those kids in
spite of their differences is what kept it alive, she said.
Published in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star 27 Nov 1998.
Found at: http://www.egroups.com/archives.cgi/PrairieCreek message 49.
From: Kim Holly
Date: Mon Oct 18, 1999 9:53am
Subject: FW: Morgan
Also available on the Tribune-Star WWW site.
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