John Rees Morgan (1824- )

Personal details

Gender:

Male

Notes:

What is there to say about John Rees Morgan, his name recorded at birth as John Morgan, who became a mason, and emigrated to Australia with his wife Elizabeth and son Thomas? I don’t have much feeling for John Morgan because he didn’t do well by his family. I’ve been able to find out little about where he came from, or what happened to him, so he is a shadow in this story. But then, I share his name. He is the reason my surname is Morgan – the reason I thought for a very long time that half of my antecedents were Welsh (DNA tells me that Welsh is the smallest component, a mere 2%).

John was reported by his wife Elizabeth for deserting the family in November 1865. Elizabeth provided an accurate physical description of John, the only one there is: ‘He is a Welshman, a stonemason, aged 40, 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, medium build, about 10½ stone weight, dark complexion, dark hair, large dark bushy whiskers; generally wears light working clothes, and drab billycock hat’.

He left us only his name and was gone.

References:

Victoria Police Gazette, 24 May 1866, p.209

Relationships

Wife:

Elizabeth Blewett (c.1827/1828-[1894])

Children:

Fanny Morgan (1867-1899)
Edward Morgan (1866)
David Rees Morgan (1864-1865)
Gabriel Blewett Morgan (1861-1930)
Emma Morgan (1859-1861)
John Waters Morgan (1856-1863)
Elizabeth Ann Morgan (1854-1856)
Edward Blewett Morgan (1853-1854)
Thomas Morgan (1851-1919)
Emma Morgan (1850-1854)

Marriage date:

15 July 1849

Place:

Liverpool, England

Notes:

Elizabeth's mother Ruth Blewett was a witness. The other witness was Robert Morgan, neither father nor brother of John Morgan. Was he an uncle?

References:

Liverpool Marriage 1849 - Morgan Blewett

Baptism

Date:

12 March 1824

Place:

St David's Pembrokeshire, Wales

References:

St David's Wales Baptism 1824 - Morgan

England & Wales Census 1841

Date:

6 June 1841

Place:

Penzance, Cornwall

References:

England & Wales Census, 1841 - Goat Street, St David, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales

England & Wales Census 1851

Date:

30 March 1851

Place:

Penzance, Cornwall

References:

England & Wales Census, 1851 - Abbey Place, New Street, Madron, Penzance, Cornwall

Emigration

Date:

20 July 1854

Place:

Liverpool, England

Notes:

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.)

References:

'Shipping Intelligence: Arrival of the Bloomer', The Age, 30 November 1854, p.4
Bloomer 1854 - Morgan

Immigration

Date:

21 November 1854

Place:

Portland, Victoria

Notes:

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).

References:

'Shipping Intelligence: Arrival of the Bloomer', The Age, 30 November 1854, p.4

Operative Stonemasons

Date:

23 September 1857

Place:

Victoria, Australia

Notes:

Gabriel Blewett and John Morgan joined the Operative Stonemasons, an early trade union in Victoria, on this date and were members through at least 1858 (John’s name was transferred from the Contributions book to the Arrears book on 30 June 1858). Given what happened to Gabriel after he fell from a building scaffold in 1868 it is unlikely that either retained their membership.

References:

Index showing the name and date of entrance of each member since the formation of the Society AU NBAC E117-9-1

Disappearance

Date:

20 November 1865

Place:

Maldon, Victoria

Notes:

I have tried many avenues and failed to definitively identify John Morgan after this date. In April 1866, a J Morgan, 41, left for New Zealand ports. The ship, the Gothenburg, sailed via Hokitika and Grey Mouth to Nelson, in New Zealand’s South Island. There were gold rushes to nearby Okarita and Bruce Bay around this time. It could so easily have been John Morgan. His age, the date and circumstances feel right. I can imagine him thinking – wishing – there must be more to life, as yet another child (whose paternity he probably questioned) was about to squall its way into existence. Working on that assumption I identified a possible candidate in New Zealand, John Morgan, 50 (which may have been an approximation) who died 17 November 1878 at the Dunedin Asylum of ‘senile decay’. His death certificate bore the bare minimum of identity details and it has not been possible to confirm this as John.

References:

Victoria Police Gazette, 24 May 1866, p.209

A drab billycock hat

Giant Bomb