“A native of Charles County, Maryland”
.
According to the 1833 newspaper notice of his death, Thomas Morris “was a native of Charles County, Maryland but had been a resident of Loudoun for the last 26 years.“
That suggests he lived in or around Charles County, Maryland until about 1807, when he moved into Loudoun County, Virginia at the age of 25.
Of course it is possible that he may have temporarily settled somewhere between the two — perhaps in Fairfax County or D.C.
His Likely Mother — Ann Morris
I can find only one reference in Charles County to a Thomas Morris. On 18 January 1805 a single woman named Ann Morris dictated her will:
“After recommending her body to the earth and her soul to God… tho in a low state of health, disposes of her property in the following manner, viz: to my daughter Teresa, five shillings, to my son John five shillings, to my son Thomas five shillings, to my son Francis five shillings, to my daughter Mary and son Walter all my real and personal estate after paying & discharging all my lawful & just debts… this the 18th day of Jan’y 1805 Amen.” Signed: Ann Morris (by her x mark). Witness: Samuel Jameson, Thomas Jameson, Theophilus Y. Burch.1
The will was proved in court two years later on 19 February 1807 when
“…then came Walter Morris the residuary legatee and made oath… that the within written instrument of writing is the true and whole last will and testament of Ann Morris late of Charles County deceased that hath come to his hands or possession and that he doth not know of any other.” The witnesses Samuel Jameson, Thomas Jameson and Theophilus Y. Burch testified that “they did see the testatrix therein named sign and seal this will and that they heard her publish, pronounce and declare the same to be her last will and testament…” 2
This does not constitute proof of the relationship, but Ann’s will is the only mention of a Thomas Morris that I could find and her death in 1807 neatly accounts for Thomas Morris’s migration into Loudoun County the same year. Further, if she was as poor as her will implies she probably would have apprenticed her children, thus accounting for Thomas Morris’s trade as a tailor.
What do we know about Ann Morris?
She was apparently a midwife. An accounting of expenses of the estate of Justinian Burch, the father of the witness to her will who died in 1804, lists three undated entries labeled “money paid Ann Morris for midwife fee as per account”, one of 15 shillings, one of £1:2:6 and the other of £1:10.3. These fees may have been for Burch’s slaves, since th elast of his own children had been born more than ten years earlier. .
Ann Morris had been widowed (or at least single) for at least fifteen years. before making her will. She was one of five Morris households enumerated in the 1790 census of Charles County (the numbers are males>16 – males<16 – females):
Ann Morris 0 – 4 – 4 (p578)
Joshua Morris 1 – 3 – 3 (p578)
William Morris 4 – 2 – 5 + 6 slaves (p574)
Jacob Morris 3 – 0 – 2 + 7 slaves (p574)
James Morris Sr. 1 – 0 – 0 (p576)
Of the three households with males under 16, we can eliminate William Morris by other records, leaving Ann and Joshua as potential parents of Thomas. Unfortunately we have no further record of Joshua Morris beyond his 1800 census record..
The 1800 census listed her with just one male under 10 and two females under 10 in addition to herself listed in the “over 45” column. If those age groups are accurate, that is clearly inconsistent with her having been a widow since 1790, so they may have been children born out of wedlock. The four sons mentioned in her will were not heads of household in 1800, and the absence of at least three of them from her census household could be explained if they were apprentices, who would typically be counted in their master’s household.
Record Losses
Essentially all court records prior to 1796 no longer exist. Marriage records are also lost. Research is mainly limited to probate and land records, which do not mention Ann Morris or her children.
Some Orphans Court and Guardian records do exist in Charles County for the period 1788-1823 and have numerous entries for the children of Walter Morris (who died in 1783) and William Morris (who died in 1794) , but contain no mention of Ann Morris or her children — the implication being that the children were not heirs to any significant real or personal property. (“Orphans” at this time were children under 21 whose father had died, regardless of the presence of their mother. Guardians were appointed to manage the inheritances of children.))
The only other Ann Morris of the period was the widow of Walter Morris who died in 1783, but that Ann remarried to a man named Ignatius Wheeler in 1784, was widowed again in 1791 and married a third time to Alexander Mackie. She therefore could not have been the Ann Morris of the 1790 and 1800 censuses or of the 1805 will.
Searching for his father
If Thomas Morris was born in Charles County in 1782, then his father should have been counted among its residents in the fortuitously preserved tax list of 1783:
Richard Morris – District 1 – no land
Joshua Morris – District 3 – no land
Jacob Morris – District 6 – 390 acres
Walter Morris – District 6 – 279 acres
William Morris – District 6 – 131 acres
Richard and Joshua Morris were listed in Districts 1 (William & Mary Hundreds) and District 3 (Benedict & Bryan Town), respectively, with no land. The other three, all sons of a Thomas Morris who died in 1769, were extensive landowners in District 6 (Port Tobacco). None of those three had a son (or grandson) named Thomas, leaving Richard and Joshua as potential fathers. But Joshua is presumably the same Joshua Morris enumerated in the 1790 and 1800 censuses, so could not be her deceased husband,
A 1782 Tax “Assessment” list also exists for Charles County, which lists four Morris men”
Josh’a Morriss (sic). £12 assessment. (Benedict Hundred)
James Morris. £10 assessment (East Newport Hundred)
Jacob Morris. £826 assessment. (Lower East Hundred, Port Tobacco)
Walter Morris £478 assessment (Lower East Hundred, Port Tobacco)
William Morris. £344 assessment. (Lower East Hundred, Port Tobacco)
This adds another potential father — James Morris. Richard Morris may have been assessed also, as the lists for one or two “Hundreds” (constabulary districts) are so faded that names cannot be read.
There had also been a special census taken during the Revolution, completed in March 1778, to count all men 18 or older in order to enforce the taking of the oath of affirmation to the state. That census found five men aged 18 or more in Charles County:
Hugh Morris (East Hundred, Newport)
James Morris (East Hundred, Newport)
Jacob Morriss (Port Tobacco, East Hundred)
Richard Morriss (Newport, West Hundred)
Joshua Morris (Bryan Town Hundred)
There is not a single other mention of James Morris or Richard Morris found to date. They were not landowners and are not found in probate records. It could be that one or the other died leaving a wife named Ann and several children bu there are no records found (so far) to support that possibility.
Do we know anything about the other children named in Ann Morris’s will?
Not much. The sons John, Thomas and Francis are not mentioned at al in the surviving records of Charles County. And absent marriage records, we have no information about the two daughters.
Walter Morris (ca 1765-75) appears to have been the eldest son. He was clearly over 21 when he presented the will in court. He was not the Walter Morris enumerated in Charles County in the 1800 census — that was the son of Jacob Morris. But he seems to have been the same Walter Morris enumerated in 1810 as a single man aged 26-45 and in 1820 aged over 45. (He was the only Walter Morris in the country in 1820.). He was not found in any subsequent records.
Possible Significance of His Children’s Given Names
I am usually skeptical about drawing genealogical conclusions from given names, but in this case we have few other clues to work with. We know that the firstborn son was named Richard Thompson Morris perhaps for Mary Willett’s father and that the third daughter was named Keziah, perhaps after her mother. (The significance of “Thompson”, a name given to two sons, is unknown. ) Andrew and Hannah, parents of Thomas Morris’s second wife were memorialized in the names of two of the children of the second marriage. Note that the given names of his children may reflect the influence of his wives, rather than of Thomas Morris himself. None of the daughters were named for their mothers.
The names of his last two sons are interesting, though they offer no insight into his origins.
James Heaton Morris: Thomas Morris named his first son James Heaton Morris. Dr. James Heaton (1759-1824), was born in Suffolk County, New Jersey, became a doctor in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and moved to Loudoun County, Virginia after the Revolution. He and Thomas Morris both lived in Purcellville so they clearly knew one another, but why Thomas Morris gave that name to his first-born son is not clear. Several members of the Heaton family are buried in the Ketoctin Baptist Church Cemetery in Purcellvile whose records inform us that Dr. James Heaton died on 11 July 1824, four years before Thomas Morris’s son was born. He had a son James Heaton Jr. (1792-1826) who was also dead by the time James Heaton Morris was born. (There was also a grandson named James Decatur Heaton (1816-1859), but he was only twelve when James Heaton Morris was born.)
Dr. James Heaton was married to Lydia Osborn (1778-1839) who has no obvious relationship to either Thomas Morris or his wife. Nor does Thomas Morris’s third wife Nancy Hesser, the mother of the two boys, have any known relationship to James Heaton.
John Thomas William Morris: To add to the mystery, Dr. James Heaton had a son named John Thomas William Heaton (1810-1862) who is buried in the same cemetery as his father. Three given names was quite rare in this time frame, so it seems likely that Thomas Morris either named his son after Heaton or that both men were named for the same person. The former seems unlikely – John Thomas William Heaton was only 18 when Thomas Morris’s second son was born.
Another Thomas Morris in Loudoun County?
Although “our” Thomas Morris was the only one of that name found in Loudoun records in the 1820s and 1830s, there were two other men in the area with the same name.
The first was the Thomas Morris who married Catherine Fouch on 27 October 1815 in Loudoun County.4 Whoever he was, he also does not appear among the taxables through 1812, nor did he head a household in Loudoun in 1820. He may have been the same person who served in the War of 1812; army registers show that a Thomas Morris enlisted at New Orleans in the 1st Infantry on 7 September 1816 giving his age as 24, occupation as shoemaker, and his birthplace as Loudoun County, Virginia. The same records show he deserted a week later.
There was also a much younger Thomas Morris who was briefly in Loudoun County. A shoemaker named William Morris who lived in Leesburg applied for a pauper’s Revolutionary War pension in 1820 listing among his children a son Thomas, age 14. Coincidentally, he was another Loudoun resident who moved to Muskingum County, Ohio in 1823.
- Charles County Will Book 1801-1808, pp401. [↩]
- Charles County Will Book 1801-1808, p402. [↩]
- Charles County Inventory Accounts 1808-1812, p16 and p18. [↩]
- Jordan R. Dodd et al., Early American Marriages: Virginia to 1850, online. Also see Mary Alice Wertz, Marriages of Loudoun County, Virginia, 1757-1853, page 107. [↩]