The Morgan Family

Status: looking for family!

I had been sent over 50 old photos - from cartes de visite to cabinet cards to RPPCs and one tiny tin type - from a follower of the Forgotten Faces Project on Instagram (@forgottenfacesproject), and as I sifted through the massive, generous donation, I noticed something: the Morgan surname, written on two photos. One was labeled Mary Morgan, of a seated woman, and the other labeled 'James Morgan family'. Sure enough, the woman seated alone is, clear as day, the same woman as the mother photographed with her family.

This would be Mary Morgan, as is written on the back of her photo. Mary was born Mary Belding to Alvin Belding and Lamira Ladd in 1836. On November 4, 1854, she was united in marriage to James Morgan in Stark, OH.

James and Mary had their first daughter, Flora, in 1858. By the 1860 census, they are found living on a farm in Marlborough, Stark Co., OH.

Between 1863 and 1870, the family had moved to Muscatine, IA: in the 1870 cennsus, James, Mary, Flora, and their second daughter, 7 year old Mira, are living in Wapsinonoc Township - a township that encompasses West Liberty, where the family portrait was photographed. James ran a hardware store there.

In the 1880 census, James, Mary, Flora, and Mira are enumerated in West Liberty, OH. James still works as a hardware merchant, while Flora, now 21, is a school teacher. And while the family appears in the same location in the 1885 Iowa state census, that same year Flora and Mira depart on a trek to California:

Two years later, on October 12 1887, Flora married Edward Packard, also a hardware merchant, in Los Angeles. Of course, without the 1890 census we can't be sure what the Morgan family was up to that year, but by 1900 James and Mary had joined their daughters in California. James, Mary, and Mira lived together that year in Santa Barbara, while Flora and her husband lived with their two boys Henry and James. However, just one year later, tragedy struck the family:

Mira never married. She continued to live with her mother Mary and was dedicated to her career in juvenile justice. In 1909, it paid off when she became a probation officer:

Mira and her newly appointed job title as Probation Officer appear in the 1910 federal census with her mother Mary, but that same year she decided to pack her bags and move out of Santa Barbara, joining her sister Flora in Los Angeles:

Flora, meanwhile, had been raising three boys Henry (b. 1889), James (b. 1893), and Myron (b. 1901). While Flora remained a housewife, her younger sister Mira was quick to take up a new highly-regarded position in Los Angeles with the LAPD, becoming first assistant to Alice Stebbins Wells - one of the first women to become a police officer in the United States. Alice famously hand-stitched her own police uniform: the first police uniform for a woman in the country. This position was perfect for Mira, who was interested in sociological and socio-criminal questions, particularly was they related to women and children.

Mira and Flora's mother, Mary Morgan, passed away in 1918, and the daughters lived the rest of their lives in Los Angeles, Flora passing in 1946 and Mira in 1952.

Catherine Peterson Dolbow

William James Boucher