More on the Morgans

The Morgans and Popenoes settled in Beavercreek Township, called the cradle of Greene County, where the first enumeration was taken in 1803 by Peter Popenoe. In the same year, the first court in the county was held there in a little log house built by Owen Davis’ son-in-law. The first grand jury included Evan Morgan and Harry Martin.

As previously mentioned, Nancy and Evan had 14 children. Four died in childhood. The others were:

Lucy Morgan (27 Feb 1800 - 10 Jul 1888) m in 1824 Alonzo Holcomb and had 8 children (including Marinda who m Willis Parkison Popenoe. Accordingly, I descend from both James Popenoe and his sister Nancy.)

Aside from his farming, Evan was always interested in land deals. In 1797, before moving to Ohio, Evan and Nancy Popenoe Morgan bought for Ł450 the Mason County, KY farm of Nancy’s uncle, Harry Martin, brother of Elizabeth Martin Popino The sale included a slave mother and her two children and all the contents of the farm down to 200 bushels of corn, 300 pounds of bacon and 100 pounds of sugar. The Morgans apparently didn't buy the farm to live on because they continued to live in Clark County, Kentucky and then Greene County, Ohio. In 1807 they sold the farm back to Harry Martin for Ł60. It would appear that they were helping out a relative who had need for the money, perhaps for his own land deals (Martin bought various parcels in Mason County before and after 1797), and that Martin never left the farm and must have been paying rent for ten years, so that a sale back for Ł60 was reasonable.[1]

Following the War of 1812, Evan obtained land in Brownsville, Fayette County, Indiana available for veterans (along with Harry Martin and his cousin, Thomas Constant) but he doesn’t appear to have ever lived there.[2] This was close to where Nancy’s cousin, William Popino, had his land.

Constant and Morgan proceeded to establish a town on their land. The History of Union County says: "Brownsville, the first county seat, was platted for Thomas Constant the proprietor with 200 lots, October 27, 1815 by James Leviton, surveyor. Court was held there in 1821, 1822, and 1823, then the county seat was moved to Liberty." The History is incomplete because the deedbook says: "Constant and Morgan took the oaths prescribed by law being the proprietors of the town of Brownsville…"

Unfortunately, Morgan and Constant didn't do as well as Nancy Martin's cousin, Presley Martin, who got rich by developing New Martinsville, Virginia in 1808-1810. The Union County, Indiana deedbook shows lots being sold for around $50 each in 1819 and 1820, signed by Thomas and Margery Constant and Evan and Nancy Morgan. They probably had a two or three day trip from their homes in Greene County, Ohio to visit their new town and sign the deeds. Later they deputized Leviton as their Attorney in Fact and he was able to sell lots for them after they had moved to Illinois. Morgan and Constant offered to trade one of their lots to William Popino for his interest in the Salem County, NJ land left by his grandfather but William declined.[3] By the mid 1820s, some lots sold for as little as $25. The last sale I found was in 1841--three lots for $300. Alas, nobody got rich. And Brownsville today is a town that time forgot--not much bigger than the one originally platted.

Harry Martin died in Fayette County in 1819. Between the early 1820s and early 1830s Evan and Nancy Morgan, the Constant family and their friends and relatives moved to Illinois perhaps to take advantage of the opportunity to get new land through land warrants from War of 1812 service. John and Martha Morgan, went along too, and John is reported to have died in 1834 at the age of 86 and been buried in a cemetery in Richland, IL. No records of this still exist.

By an act of Congress in 1809, Illinois had been set off from Indiana as a separate territory. Illinois became a state in 1818 but Sangamon County did not yet exist.

About 1818 an old bachelor named Elisha Kelly went up from North Carolina. He found some good hunting grounds near the Sangamon River and liked the area so much that he went home and persuaded his father and four brothers and some other families to move out there. When the State decided to set up the new county in 1821, the only place in it with enough families to board and lodge the members of the court was around the Kellys. Kelly agreed to build a log court house, 20 feet long, for $42.50.

In 1824, the legislature considered a more permanent site for the county seat and the contest was between Springfield and Sangamo Town. A group of five commissioners set out to visit the sites before making their decision.

After visiting Springfield, with which they were not very much impressed, they inquired the nearest route to Sangamo Town. The historic town of Sangamo--where Lincoln later built his flat boat and Rawley Morgan had his mill--was located about seven miles northwest of Springfield on the west bluff of the river in what is now Gardner Township.

Leading citizens of Springfield would not hear of their leaving without a guide, so Andrew Elliott, a tavern keeper and noted woodsman, volunteered to show them the way. It is now about a fifteen minute drive to the site of old Sangamo Town, but Elliott took the commissioners in a roundabout way through swamps and thickets, and back and forth across Spring Creek and the river, making the trip 30 miles. When the commissioners arrived at Sangamo, they agreed the town, beautifully situated on a high bluff overlooking the Sangamon River was the perfect spot, but they also agreed that it was almost inaccessible.

They were so exhausted and disgusted with the seemingly inaccessible region, they would listen to no explanations and soon returned to Springfield to determine the location of the permanent county seat. Sangamo was actually a better location than Springfield, as it was on the water, contained several stores, and had a saw mill, grist mill and a carding machine."[4]

Springfield prevailed and in 1825 town lots were laid out. The town grew and in 1837, partly through the politicking of Abraham Lincoln, the state capital was moved there from Vandalia.

The local people had had high hopes of making the Sangamo River into a major transportation artery and with great effort a steamship, the Talisman, was brought up to Springfield in 1832. When it was time to return home, the river had fallen so that they could not turn the Talisman around and it had to back out all the way. That was the last such effort, and with hopes of river navigation dashed, Sangamo and New Salem, another 7 miles upriver, ceased to exist in the late 1830s or 1840s. Because New Salem was where Abraham Lincoln got his start in Illinois, it reappeared in the twentieth century just as it was in the 1830s, thanks to money from William Randolph Hearst and tender loving care by the National Park Service. A walk through New Salem with its new log cabins spread out along the main road enables you to imagine what Sangamo town must have been like.

Many of our crowd were located in the area from Pleasant Plains, about fifteen miles west of Springfield, to Sangamo Town, including the village of Richland (where Alonzo Holcomb was once postmaster). They don't show up in the 1822 elections but in the election of 2 August 1824 we find at Union Precinct, in the house of Thomas Constant, 124 voters including Archibald Constant, Isaac Morgan, Samuel Carman, and John Strode. In Richland precinct there were 202 voters including Evan Martin, John Constant, John, Moses and David Broadwell, John, Ralph, William and Joshua Morgan, and Thomas Maxwell. Two years later at the Court House in Springfield, voters included William Lamme, Rolley Martin, William Constant, Thomas and John Morgan, John C Vance, John Judy, and Henry and Edward Davis.[5]

An important man in the area was Moses Broadwell. Born in New Jersey, in the 1780s he moved to a fort about five miles north of present-day Cincinnati, later settling in nearby Claremont County, Ohio. In the Spring of 1819 Moses and his family went by keelboat to St. Louis, then upriver to Illinois where they settled on the south side of Richland Creek, about two miles east of the later town of Pleasant Plains. Moses became a big landowner and owned the land on which Sangamo Town was incorporated in 1824. He called his home property Clayville, in honor of Henry Clay. He built there a tavern and stagecoach stop that for decades was an important stopping and gathering place. It still exists with an historical marker out front, but it needs someone with money to fix it up as a proper tourist attraction. In addition to the tavern, the Broadwell family also operated a general store and a tannery on nearby Richland Creek, and they had the first steam mill in Sangamon County. Moses had nine children, among them John and Charles. John's son Daniel, b in 1821, married Irene Holcomb, daughter of Alonzo Holcomb and Lucy Morgan. John's daughter, Harriet, married Albert Gallatin Popenoe. She died soon after bearing three children. Charles Broadwell, who married the daughter of Jacob Carman, ran the carding mill at Sangamo Town at least as early as 1824.

Charles Broadwell subsequently sold his carding machines in Sangamo Town to Rawley Morgan, son of Nancy Popenoe and Evan Morgan. Rawley was evidently a real go-getter. In an 1834 ad he stated that he had been carding wool since 1824, at that time working for Charles Broadwell, that he had had a fulling mill which he was moving to the same place, and that he planned to carry on the wool carding business "like distraction". In 1837 he announced that he had taken his brother, Peter Popenoe Morgan in partnership, that he had a lot of new carding machines fitted for the finest merino or saxony wool, also a spinning machine with 40 spindles. "Now suckers, for a trifle, you can have your wool carded and spun and your cloth fulled, and I wish, by next season, to be so fixed, that you may drive your sheep into one door and run around to the other and pick up a roll of cloth….Clean your wool of dirt, sticks, and briers, for Cards cost cash since Jackson is not President, and I don't want to get my machines insured."[6]

Unfortunately, Rawley's wishes for next season were never fulfilled. Like many others he suffered from the national depression that began in 1837 and, according to his son, went security for a neighbor who was unable to repay his debts, with the result that all of Rawley's property was sold. Soon thereafter, he moved to Iowa. Nancy Popenoe Morgan went with him, reportedly later returning to Sangamon County to live with her son Thomas Morgan. She died in 1856 but there are no gravestones marking where she or Evan were buried. A number of the old cemeteries no longer exist.

Alonzo and Lucy Morgan Holcomb went from Ohio to Sangamon County in 1831 as described in this July letter from Lucy to Irena Holcomb, Alonzo’s mother:

Dear Mother, We are here [Sangamon Co, IL] and I feel it my duty as well as a pleasure to let you know something of our journey and situation here. We started on the third and got here on the seventeenth of September. Alonzo hired a man to bring our goods and he owns a first rate mare and little wagon which brought the family with as much comfort as any one could travel. We had very bad roads through Indiana but after we crossed the Wabash we had good roads and great prairies until we got here. I think we are tolerably well satisfied but I assure you I could not have said this a few months ago for I felt melancholy enough. Myron [her son] was taken sick on the road and after we got here he grow worse for several days and I really thought he would not live. I have never known before what it was to have a sick child without my mother to come and stay with me but now I was more than three hundred miles from her and I felt myself that far from every friend except my own family but I was much disappointed when I became acquainted with the neighbors and found them as kind as I could wish. We are now living with my uncle William Morgan, my father’s brother or rather in one room of his house. He has been like a father to us, appears to be much pleased with Alonzo and we meet with many farmers from him which I could not have expected. Alonzo has bought a lease on uncle’s land six years due at the end of that time or before we hope to be able to purchase a farm of our own. This is something like the milk maid’s calculation but we will strive not to let the pail fall from our own hand. We shall get possession of our lease in March then expect we shall feel as though we had got home.

Alonzo intends to turn his attention to raising cattle. They are easy raised and bring in money readily. I shall be greatly pleased when I have ten or twelve cows to milk. If this ever comes to pass I think I shall have cheese and butter plenty. Alonzo once told me if I would make a cheese as good as his mother could he would give me fifteen dollars. I think possibly he may lose his money but I tell him I shall not let him be the judge for he is such a mother’s boy that no other one can do quite so well, but if I fail I shall send for you to learn me and you shall have the premium….A good tanner is needed. This I study much about and I really feel so anxious that I sometimes believe it will be brought about some day.

Our little girls learn very well. Irene spells in four syllables, Marinda a little in two letters. Myron is now two years old, talks every thing. They are now all three sitting on the floor with their plays as happy as the innocent can be. Irene has been much troubled about leaving her grandmother – often wants to go back to Ohio. She is like myself – the name of Ohio will ever sound sweet to me for there is my birthplace in two miles of where we moved from where I was born and I have reason to believe that I left some warm hearted friends and I know as good neighbors as any one need to desire. Since we left there one of my sisters has left time and all its concerns. When I parted with her I thought it was a long adieu, she was lingering in a consumption. Dear girl it appears but a few days back when her cheeks were as roses but disease had faded the rose and even taken her to the cold grave.[7]

Alonzo started a school and later was postmaster of Richland (a town now extinct); was a farmer, and made shoes in the evening to help out with the family income. Subscription Paper, Sangamon County, IL, December 26, 1831:

Alonzo Holcomb proposes teaching a school in the Richland Schoolhouse where should he meet with sufficient encouragement he will teach reading, writing, and arithmetic for the term of six months or 130 days and as he considers it his duty will instruct the manners and guard the morals of all scholars committed to his care….Terms $5 per scholar. Young cattle, pork, wheat, and other approved country produce will be received in payment. The subscribers to furnish a house and provide all other necessaries for the comfortable accommodation of this school.

Peter Popenoe Morgan was employed by a merchant in nearby New Salem to take a load of produce to New Orleans by flatboat. This was a large raft, which floated on the currant with the assistance of several long oars. At night they would tie up to the bank. In New Orleans the boat would be taken apart and sold as lumber. A family story, probably apocryphal, has it that on several of these trips a fellow crewman was Abraham Lincoln, who lived at New Salem. When they were tied up for the evening they would sometimes have a speaking contest and young Lincoln far outdid his comrades. The captain remarked that "that young Lincoln will make his mark in the world." It is said that Alonzo Holcomb also knew young Lincoln well.

Rawley Morgan had met and married Eliza Sayre in Greene County, Ohio on 13 Sep 1823. The Sayres were from the area in southern New Jersey where the first Peter Popeno had lived and he had Seely and Sayre relatives there. I don’t have any evidence to suggest that the Sayres arrival in Greene County was more than coincidence, but I suspect that it was. Rawley and Eliza Morgan had twelve children and one of their descendants has written a comprehensive genealogy that includes many of the details in this article.[10]

As previously mentioned, in the 1840s Rawley and Eliza moved to Iowa following some of his brothers. Most of Evan and Nancy’s children, with their families had moved to Sangamon County, and then on to Iowa in the early 1840s. It appears that Evan Morgan died in Iowa in 1841. Nancy eventually returned to Sangamon County to live with her son Thomas and she died there in 1854.[11] As Harvey Morgan says: "When you think of what that lady went through in her 79 years of life, you have to be awed. She married at 16, gave birth to 14 children, fought the Indians, raised the kids, kept the family together, and shared every burden, hardship, agony and pain shoulder to shoulder with her man from Virginia to Iowa, in all probability, walking the whole way."[12]

Rawley rented several different farms in Iowa but never succeeded very well and so decided to take the Oregon Trail and seek his fortune in Oregon. His wife died just before leaving, but in 1852 he set out with all but two of his children and their families, and with his brother Peter Popenoe Morgan and his family. This was at the height of the movement along this route when there was almost a steady stream of travelers, many of whom would go from one train to another. There was also cholera and along the Platte River in Nebraska, Rawley, and one of his sons with wife and child, all died from the disease. The rest of the group reached Oregon and were later joined by other Morgan relatives where they have prospered to this day.

[1] Mason County KY Deed Book D, p 513, County Clerk’s Office, Maysville and Mason County Deed Book J, p 229.

[2] Fayette County, IN Deed Book A, pp 77, 92, 206, etc

[3] Letter in Popenoe family files

[4] Bruce Alexander Campbell, The Sangamon Saga, Springfield, Phillips Brothers, Inc. 1976, p 25.

[5] The voting lists are from Snow Birds, Poll Books of Sangamo County 1821-1830, Springfield: Sangamon County Genealogical Society, 1983. Although it does not mention our relatives, there is a fascinating book about what life was like in the county during these times: John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prarie, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

[6] Illinois State Journal, 1 Mar 1834 and 13 May 1837, on microfilm at IL State Historical Library, Springfield.

[7] This is one of a collection of letters that came down in the Holcomb/Curry family and are now on microfilm (MS 1046) at the Kansas State Historic Society, Topeka.

[8] This was probably James Marshall, married to Ruth Morgan, Alonzo’s sister-in-law, and Isaac Morgan, Evan’s brother, so Alonzo’s uncle.

[9] In letters collection above.

[10] Published by Harvey James Morgan, 5550 NE 187^th Street, Seattle, WA 98155.

[11] Family record of Morgan births, marriages and deaths in Popenoe family files. Provenance unknown. There are no cemetery records for Nancy or Evan Morgan; a number of the old cemeteries no longer exist.

[12] Harvey Morgan, op cit, p 15