{"id":5390,"date":"2020-07-28T13:12:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T17:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2020-07-28T14:20:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T18:20:30","slug":"it-all-start-started-with-a-simple-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/?p=5390","title":{"rendered":"It All Start Started with a simple question"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day in 1981, I asked my dad what I thought was going to be a simple question, I said \u201cDad who were you named after?\u201d You see my dad had what I thought was an unusual name at the time, his name was Merle Milton Morrison. Now the only Merle I knew of at that time was Merle Haggard the county western singer, and I did not think dad could have been named after him since dad was older than Mr. Haggard. So, dad\u2019s reply was \u201cson I have no idea who I was named after, my parents did not talk about family very much\u201d. And I suppose that could have ended it right there, but now I was curious. I wanted to find out how dad got his name. And so started my search into my dad\u2019s side of the family, and what has turned out to be a 40 year journey into discovering my Morrison roots and meeting all kinds of wonderful close and distant cousins along the way, not to mention all the kind and helpful strangers that were eager to help me uncover my family history.<\/p>\n

Now back in 1981, my parents had just retired and moved back to Illinois, their native state, from New Jersey. We had moved to New Jersey in 1961 due to my dad getting transferred out there. My dad had worked for the Government as an Electronics technician after being discharged from the army at the end of WW II. The Decatur Signal Depot, in Decatur Illinois closed and they gave my dad the choice of transferring to either Tennessee or New Jersey. And so, after discussing it with mom they decided that New Jersey gave dad the best opportunity for advancement. Therefore, the east coast became our new home. We lived in New Jersey one mile from the Atlantic Ocean, and close to middle of the state. It was about the same distance North from where we lived to NYC as it was South to Atlantic City.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to moving back to Illinois after dad retired. I originally had planned on staying in New Jersey, but all our family lived back in Illinois, so I moved back with my parents.<\/p>\n

Now growing up in New Jersey I never once thought about learning more about my Morrison side. Dad\u2019s mom, Alma Amelia, had passed away only four months after dad had been discharged from the army in August of 1945, and his dad, Alva Leander, had passed away when I was only 1 month old, so I never knew my Morrison grandparents. Now my grandparents on my mother\u2019s side was a different story, Grand paw Helm had a tractor, and he would let me ride with him on it and even steer it when I was only five years old. And Grand maw Helm was the sweetest lady, I could talk to her about things that I could not even talk about with my own parents.<\/p>\n

Almost every summer when we lived in New Jersey we would come back to Illinois and spend a week or so. Dad had kept the house he had bought when he and mom got married and rented it out after moving to New Jersey. So, part of the reason we came back to Illinois every summer was dad usually had to do work on the house because the renters were continually tearing it up, while mom visited with her mom and siblings and I would play with my many cousins. The area where my parents first home was, became a bad part of town, and eventually dad got tired of always spending the better part of his vacation fixing it up, and finally sold it.<\/p>\n

So maybe being around family got my curiosity up, but for whatever reason, I asked my dad that simple question,\u201d who were you named after\u201d. Now back in 1981 there was no internet, nor Ancestry or findagrave, and I had no clue on how to search one\u2019s family history.<\/p>\n

So one day not to long after I had asked dad that question, he said that a long time ago a lady had wrote to him inquiring about his family, and at the time dad was working for the federal government and on some very top secret and sensitive work, so he never replied to the request. But now that he was retired, he thought it would be okay for me to write the lady, if he would find the letter. Well, he did, and it was dated 1973. From a lady named Sallie Klure, a distant cousin, and she had been doing research on my line of Morrison\u2019s for over 20 years, and so I wrote to her and after agreeing on a price she sent me what she had on my dad\u2019s family of Morrison\u2019s. Come to find out Mrs. Klure had been in contact with a Great-Uncle of mine by the name of Luther Nelson Morrison, one of my Grandfather Alva Leander Morrison\u2019s brothers, and he had been the Morrison that liked family history and given Mrs. Klure most of her information on our direct line. But at this point in time I was yet to learn about the North Carolina connection. Most of the information was with a line of Morrison\u2019s from Northern Indiana, up and around the town of Warren, in Huntington County. So, the progenitor of this line of Morrison\u2019s seemed to be a man by the name of Leander Morrison. Now I knew my grandfather Morrison\u2019s middle name was Leander, so on my next week of vacation from my job became available, I scheduled a trip up to Warren, Indiana. Then off I went. The first place I stopped at was the Public Library in Warren, IN. I started searching and came across a cemetery named the Good Cemetery, and in it was buried a Leander Morrison. Come to find out this Leander was an older brother to my 2nd Great-Grandfather, James P. Morrison. So I asked the Librarian if she knew where this Good Cemetery was located, and she said \u201cyes, it is right behind the Morrison Restaurant\u201d, and I am sure that my chin must have bounced off the floor several times after that, I said \u201cdid I hear you right? You said behind the Morrison Restaurant?\u201d and she looked at me and nonchalantly said, \u201cthat\u2019s what I said\u201d. Well after thanking her profusely and getting directions there, I gathered my notebooks and headed to the Morrison Restaurant and the Good cemetery, located just behind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Well after getting there still in amazement that there was a restaurant named Morrison here and there was a good possibility that there was a connection to my line of Morrison\u2019s, I collected myself and went in, I asked if the owner was in and shortly a nice tall slender gentleman came out and introduced himself as Don Morrison owner and operator.( Don Morrison and his brother Richard, are both Morrison-Q members now). I introduced myself and after showing him some of my information that I had on my line and some pictures I had with me, he said, hold on I think my dad would like to meet you. So, he called his dad and not more that five minutes later his dad a Mr. Lloyd Morrison pulls up in the parking lot. After introductions were made and talking for a while, he took me to the cemetery, which you could see from the parking lot, and gave me the grand tour. He would stop at a grave and tell me who that person was and how they were related, and I took photos of a lot of the headstones.<\/p>\n

Lloyd Morrison invited me to their annual family reunion and the following year my Mom and I went to their reunion and learned more about the line of Leander Morrison and his descendants. It is then that I uncovered who my dad was named after. But before I tell you that, I need to explain how I think dad\u2019s parents decided on his name.<\/p>\n

Shortly after mom had married my dad, my dad took mom to visit his uncle Luther who I had mentioned earlier, he was the Morrison in dad\u2019s family that was interested in family history. Great-Uncle Luther had polio and was living in a nursing home at the time dad took mom to visit him. While there, Luther showed mom a hard bound book on his line of Morrison\u2019s, mom said she sort of just thumbed through the book and saw it had pictures of Morrison\u2019s in Civil War uniforms, and such, but really didn\u2019t have to much interest in it since she hadn\u2019t any children of her own yet. Ten and a half years later I came along and sometime after that she took me to visit him and asked to see that Morrison book again. And uncle Luther told her he had lent it to a cousin living in Washington, and that she never returned it. I since then have looked high and low, located distant cousins in Washington, to no avail. Without a title, or year it was published it has proven almost impossible to locate the book, and it might have only been one copy, who knows.<\/p>\n

But what I do know is my dad\u2019s first name Merle was after a Minton Merle Morrison, a farmer and a grandson of Leander Morrison, and dad\u2019s middle name Milton came from a Milton Morrison who was a 1st cousin 2x removed from my dad and had served in the Civil War. And I feel 90 percent sure that dad\u2019s parents got those names out of that book that Uncle Luther had at one time.<\/p>\n

\"\"MERLE MILTON MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eventually I made the connection to the Morrison\u2019s in North Carolina and even found my 5th Great-Grandfathers tombstone, brother Andrew Morrison buried in the Thyatira Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Rowan County, NC And when I located it Dad and Mom were with me, and Mom took a picture of me on one side of the stone and dad on the other. I am glad I was able to share that moment with my dad, I think it meant a lot to him, it did to me.<\/p>\n

One bit of irony I would like to share. When living in New Jersey for 20 years , we only lived a couple of hours away from Lancaster County, PA, not knowing that is where our original Morrison\u2019s had settled in 1730, it wasn\u2019t until we moved back to Illinois and 800 miles away to find that out. Funny how things work out sometimes. And just think if I hadn\u2019t moved back to Illinois, I might not have asked my dad that\u2026 one simple question, and you all might have never got to know me. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day in 1981, I asked my dad what I thought was going to be a simple question, I said \u201cDad who were you named after?\u201d You see my dad had what I thought was an unusual name at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5403,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions\/5403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morrison-q.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}