03 Apr Search for ancestors- March 20, 2021
John Morris was a Daguerrotypist, meaning he used an early photographic process employing an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor. Before John enlisted in the Arkansas 4th Confederate Infantry, he had a color tintype photograph made of own family- wife Nancy, and toddler son, Thomas Ruffin Morris.
After the color tintype was made, John left his wife and child in the care of his parents, Harrison Ruffin Morris & Martha Ann Cheatham Morris because Nancy’s parents were both dead and her sister had a large family of her own and was unable to have Nancy and her son live with them.
John was a Corporal when he was “killed in action” in the Siege of Jackson, Mississippi in 1863. Shortly after his death, and in her grief of losing her husband, and knowing John’s parents planned to move them all to Texas, Nancy wanted to visit her family before going. Harrison Ruffin Morris “Henry” and Martha Ann insisted she leave Tom with them during her grief as she visited her brothers and sisters to say good-bye to them. Tom said she wept even as she boarded the wagon on a wagon train.
Within a few days, they received word the wagon train had been raided by a hostile native tribe and all had been killed. It was therefore a blessing that they insisted she not take Tom or he would have been killed as well.
Tom grew up with his grandparents and he was close to them, all their lives but all his life he said he missed his mother, whose life was tragic.
Contents
Most adoptees wonder who their biological father maybe?
Most adoptees wonder who their biological father maybe?This searcher got a surprise:
One woman’s search for the patriarch of her black and white family
Read below how Lucille McGruder (left) traced her family tree back to a Magruder patriarch.
