A History of the Family of Morgan, from the Year 1089 to Present Times

wmmm mfmwi^mm:9wmmmmi NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 08071703 t 1^ . Ipb/^-j /^7/^J ,4 A" V\o"* \Ae A of r -# History J^-J {j-vA ilie Family of Morgan From . the year ' ' , f •.' I •.'•''.-'''' ....• • !• /.... -'»' -^ •, • r ^- . ... : .. y. * .'. ..;• *-,-io' .. : .. •_ ! ,•_•....._ ,,.,.., : ,', I. .,. •. .. ; to present times. By - « I • • • • .it i • - » :*'•..':;:.! ; tsAppleton Morgan, Of .,;*' -/• :4 ' o's^H^ I i- . vb .•HI. F« f "',11 k<û ^J ^ // hundred copies printed, nf which this is :': No._1L...:J.JA....J.. ...:„I-.--''v- .• '•' • t (lit;.* t • ' * • • • ' » ' • • • • • • , • • T- • ^ i- PREFATORY. The word IMor-gan is a Cymric derivative, meaning one bort» the a son of the sea sea by sea, or, {mut'r, ; gin, begotten). It is not infrequently found written Margan', or Morfxan. and its iiitiquity in any of these forms—even in the fourth c itury, wi.^n the heresiarch Pelagius, a Celtic monk named Thomas M' 1 an, rendered his name into Greek {TleXayoi '///«?) —was, S3 wi: would say now, pre-historic. Ttj3 date of Pelagius precedes by a long interval the next reference to the name, —a shadowy one, yet not to be omitted from the record, —as follows : King Arthur—a legendaiy king of Britain, but not improbably the adumbration of a real local "kiiig" or chieftain therein —îs said, after a defeat in some one of hts battles with another local potentate, to have removed his queen for safety to the coast of what is now Glamorgan- shire and her there ; child, Arthur's younger son, bom, was named Mor-gan —the man bom by the sea; whence Gla- morgan—the country of the man bom by the sea. Th»» - Greek form of it, as used by the theologian who first Jet. ! the doctrine of original sin, seems to have been the first ii;<pearance of the name in undoubted history. Much etymological teaming, and much of it no doubt misleading, has be^m expended on the name. Shakespeare's use of it for one of his characters—the good old Belarius in "Cymbeline" — I find made the subject of a nott by a little-read authority on Rosicrucjanisni and kindred mystical matters of liulc nn- I port, of which quote only a few words at second hana : " Ninirod comiccts the name Mor<;an, Imogen, or lmorv;c'ii, wuli Ihi' " or o( with the of or < Morwening the break day, city Aurora, the iiy ok "Medea and of Circc. .* donis die hunter was the Sîi ol the Mornin.. " He identifies Imogen w 4i Mor^âna, whose history seems to inn'y iSat •• she was Helen."* — oidy to show how the name has been cited for its supposed mysterious significance by writers who have appetite an i p.e.- • deliction for such occultisms. f If the name Mokoan if '. y-^- connected with Shakespeare at all., I prefer to conncc. it in, this wise: One Joan Jons, relict «)f John Johns, oil r'vis*." Morgan, late «if Bristol, brewer, left a will in whicii, .: :".jg other bequests, she leaves — "To my curate, Sir 1.. mzs • ' " » Schaftespere, . .• . uni collitegia de velvet cum qu-^ " "cerico. This Sir Th nas Schaftespere (the "Sir' Iciiie the title generally given to parsons or village priests, aa i no. significant o( rank) was also a witness to this will, whi !i '^wv^ proved on F"riday. December 17th, 17 Henry VIII., in '.'i fnl, ' having been previously proved at Lanjbeih. He i.s also mv in several other Bristol wills registered at Somerset IIoi \\v-\ ' his name is "Schafth variously spelled "Schaftespere," , t, \ had a sister who died unr and "Shakespeir. "t He >iicd, { named "Jone Shackspere," His own will was ent 'I at! Somerset House, August 22d, 1559, § and begins, 1. Sir' "Thomas in full Shaksphere, Clark, || possession of, ei;,, gt.ve " to Anne Wyllson, her detles being paid, ic /" to b- :in. ilic " world to sister wife of Richard again ; my Grace, S;or<.ioni " ô to Toiiui.asir S jC t '"y sister, Jone Shackspere, 5 /^ ; tO Sir Albon .iiv Leif "Cooke, my sister, 5 yf ! Dolman, [ and to for soul to the »•! "gowne my books, praie my ; poore "St. fether bed to Sir William uryj Bartholomew, my ; Be;iy • C-:> W. T. C, Wigiton, Krands Uacon, &e— London : Kcfân, Haul.Trii^ntfr »: 1891. I t Those who have the leisure to revel for themselves m ihis occultism ol h^- . ' ' Gleanie's i',\ may consult Sir Thomas Mallory, the Mortc d'Arthur ; or, later, Kii"'! . Arthuria Legend." L.ondon, 1869; Turner • History of the Anglo-Saxony la King Arthur ; De Villemaqoe. "Contes Popul.iirei de» Anciens Bretons i'ari,-, " iS^'B. 1842 ; or Skene's Kour Ancient Bodies o( Wales," Kdinburgh, t'See abstracts of these wills in "The Great Orphan l'.«H>k and Book "i \Vil!> ii> the Council House at Bristol,'' by Rev. J. P.Wadlev, Rector of Nau'ii'îi 1' .»u- champ, 1886. I 40 Chaynay. " hoj*-*. I I. t., Clerk,'* that is, a clergyman, or one connected with a rtligiour " or mv second and the residue of I'yancr, 6/8 gowne ; ray " alter y, ods, my legacies be paid, to the poor." This Thomas Shakespeare was an ancestor, as it is inferred, of the diUT! aiist, one of whose sisters was also named Jone, or Joan (spelling being in those days an indi'Terent matter, even of coinnon names and words). At any ) e, however inferential, it is i)leasant to connect, even in the most attenuated relation, the name of Morgan with that of the great dramatist. We knw that Shakespeare touches Welshmen in his plays with a sc. of affectionate humor, making Parson Evans, with all his c ) lilies, the presiding genius of "The Merry Wives of Wind- ior," and Fluellen-ûndoubtedly phonetic ff)r Llewelyn—re- ceive the commendation of Henry the Fifth himself for his valor, which his peculiarities only emphasized and illustrated. The scenes of the Arthurian Le^ênds were in Wales. TTie Konnd Table was at Caerleon on ti'i^ Usk, and Merlin and all ihf triants, dwarfs, wizards, enchanted people and magical concerns were flourishing in that little principality, one of whofc towns was, and is to-day, Caermarthen, or, in present orthography, Carmarthen. iu this town the Morgan line must content itself with dis- covering its earliest known ancestor. Resisting the temptation to draw upon Sir Thomas Mallory and all his attractive Welsh prose ves, it is sufficient to say that this town, of which we pre- iseii'. \ view as it appears in 1892, is situated on the River Towy, which empties into Carmarthen Bay, an estuary of the Bris- tol Channel has at ten ; present about thousand inhabitants, and ]oes a prosperous business in the tin plate and lead obtA led from quarries in the adjacent hills. The town itself is su] posed to be the Maridunum mentioned by Caesar in his "Commentaries," near which the two branches of his great "u,: vay— the Via Julia— diverged; and to return to Shake- ' spi::^ e, the dramatist perhaps had this very town in mind as • !' cene of those parts of "Cymbcline" which arc located in Wales, on the road leading from Bristol (a city nearly asso> ciated with the American as will be seen later on in ; Morgans, these pages) to Milford Haven, to which Imogen started on ' " ' 8 .. : . her solitary journey when she entered the cave of Del-irius— ("Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan called"*—and hûncJ entertainment and shelter. Here, too, acc<>rding to the nebu-' lous authorities, was the birthplace of Merlin the Wizi; i. ii- the sixth In its Peter's Church Sir Richard M' century. St.. .;!c was buried, and other memories cluster about its monumci'it, to the Welsh Fusileers who fell in the Crimea, and a iinn/e stitue to General Nott, and an obelisk to the memory wf Sir Thomas Picton. The old castle of Cacrmarthen, still pre- served, often changed hands in the constant fighting < I the chieftains as well as in early Welsh with each other, subse îi<-'~'t warfare with Saxon and Norman foes. It was standing whcik here King Edward the First drove Llewelyn into the M}iiydd Du, or Black Mountains, and so brought all Wales unde the in the the 'val English crown. And here Parliamentary wars R ; troops defended it against the Roundheads, who finally : e- duced it, since when it and the old walls of the town have b rni left to their own picturesque decay. | Prior to the Roman invasion, the district now known isj was inhabited a warlike tribe called Carmarthenshire by •}•{ '^l- the Romans the Demeta.-. Of this tribe, of which the Wt , name has escaped chronicle, a man named Cadivor-fawr w f in the year 1089 a chieftain. His command lay in r>yf.J, ' (possibly the suggestion of Dcmctx"), or. as it is now naa.cJ, Pembrokeshire. His wife was Elen, daughter and heire s of • another chieftain, Llwch Llayven. \ The arms given to Cai' or were argent, a lion rampant, gardant sable, and to his nfe, sable, a boar argent, his head gules, collared and chained or, browsing beneath a holly tree proper. He died in loSy, and at names of his two oldest sons was buried Carmarthen. The j are unknown. Our researches begin — when the line of Morgan finds its first ancestor—with his third son, Bleddri. In the following pages will be found—as perhaps is the most convenient arrangement— the history of each ancestor of the , as Uiiner American line of Morgan epitomized, as far known, u.ideri , the entry of his name in its place in the genealogical line • "Cymbelin*,"!!!.

Load more