Thomas Morgan (1851-1919)

John Morgan's granddaughter Florence recalled later in life (letter to Joan Wallis), ‘All I heard of my father’s father was that on the journey out from Wales he acted as Schoolmaster on board ship.’ (They left from Liverpool, not Wales.) As time would show, John didn’t seem temperamentally suited to the role. But were there any candidates more likely than John on board the Bloomer who could have acted as schoolmaster? No. More than a third of the emigrants were agricultural labourers from Scotland. The rest were made up of ‘a superior class of mechanics’: carpenters, smiths, bricklayers and a wheelwright, with masons making up the second largest group by profession. A good proportion of the adult passengers could both read and write. (Analysis based on shipping manifest.)

At one hundred and twenty four days at sea, the Bloomer’s voyage was a very long one for the time. Of the eleven ships which arrived in Portland in western Victoria in 1854, it was the slowest. The quickest, the Edward Johnson, arrived a few months before the Bloomer in September 1854, and took only 78 days. John and Elizabeth's infant daughter's birth was registered in the Collingwood/Richmond district on 20 April 1855 by Elizabeth, and states she was born at sea on 24 November 1854 on the Bloomer ‘on her voyage from Liverpool’. Perhaps Elizabeth couldn’t remember the date (the Bloomer had arrived by the 21st).

Cause of death - malignant disease of the gall ducts and omenitum [stomach cancer], asthenia [weakness] and heart failure