52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: #1 Worth H. Morgan (Part 1)

 Every family has its ghost: that one person who seems to have slipped in and out of this life with little family notice. Worth was one of ours. Asking my dad, Worth's nephew, about Worth when I was a teenager, I got a terse and uncharacteristically angry reply, "They got mad at him because he married an Indian." I came to understand that Dad wasn't upset with Worth, but the family. 

Worth Henry Morgan was born in Iowa sometime in June of 1899, the son of William Henry Morgan and his wife Fawney Belle (Armstrong) Morgan. William Henry, known popularly as Henry, was spoken of as a "difficult" man. No specifics were given, but casual mentions of his difficult nature were occasionally dropped into conversations. Records show that a man with the same name had land seized in Missouri and sold to pay debt, land that had belonged to either Henry's maternal great grandfather or one of his uncles of the same name, or maybe both. It didn't matter anyway; Henry had left Missouri, his birthplace, for Iowa. 

Henry and Fawney (yes, that was her real name!) married in 1891 in Iowa, where her family, the Armstrongs, had lived for generations. She was already four months pregnant with their first son, Homer. The family stayed in Iowa for ten years, and that was where Worth was born. By the time Worth was born the family already had four living children: Homer, Leon, Mildred, and Faye. After Worth, there would be five more children, or possibly seven- the birth and death dates of two female infants are unclear. 

By 1904 the family had moved to Pierce County Nebraska, probably near Plainview. A few years later, Henry decided to try his chances somewhere else, and moved the family, now eight children strong, to a tiny farming town on the eastern plains of Colorado, in Kit Carson County. According to my uncle, Henry and Fawney's grandson, the farm was a complete bust, and by 1913 they were in Creighton, Nebraska, along with a ninth baby who had been born in Colorado, Elma. 

What Worth was doing during this time is unknown. According to the 1910 US Federal Census, Worth was listed as being 10 years old and having attended school during the year, and was able to read and write. As Fawney was a school teacher before her marriage, education must have been important to her. Homer, the eldest son, was 18 and working on his father's farm, and the second oldest son, Leon, had stayed in Nebraska, working as a hired man on another farm. Worth seems to have been lost in the growing flock of siblings, just another mouth to feed and another face in the crowd. On his 1918 draft card for World War I, Worth lists himself as a farm hand for a J.N. Studevant, and living almost 200 miles from his family in Wood, South Dakota. Less than a year later, Worth was about to have a wild few months.

The Pierce County Call of 27 Mar 1919 carried a startling newsclip:

Worth was 19, Sadie Barr was 15. 

What had happened to make Worth make the wild and reckless decision to elope with a 15 year-old? We can't really know, but there is plenty to speculate on here. Was he tired of just being a face in the vast brood of Morgan children? Was he looking for love that perhaps he wasn't getting at home? Or was it really a love match on his part, if not hers? But things were about to get worse for Worth:

Worth was arrested for enticement, and taken to Valentine for arraignment. However by the 17 Apr 1919 edition of the paper Cedar County News:

The fickle Sadie, who had changed her mind yet again, was finally married to Worth. 

In the papers, I could find no evidence that Worth's family ever made an appearance throughout the elopement or arrest. He truly seems to have been on his own. And on 8 Apr 1920, not even a year later, this appeared in the Plainview News:

(The initial E in Worth's name was a mistake)

His escapade had ended in disgrace. The marriage lasted less than a year, and there was alimony to be paid. In the 1920 US Federal Census, enumerated on the 25th and 26th of February, Worth was living alone on his own farm in Bazile, Nebraska, about 7 miles from his parents. Sadie was living with her parents in Plainview, and on the census, taken in January of 1920, she's listed as widowed, while Worth is listed as married. Clearly, the attachment was on his part, not hers. Why she chose to list herself as widowed is a mystery; news of the elopement and the marriage was noted in the local paper, so there is no question that people knew she was married, and that her estranged husband lived about seven miles away. A clear motive appears at the bottom of the census record for Sadie's family:

A widow with a baby would have been far more respectable than a 16 year-old divorcee with a baby, especially in regards to future marriages. Although local people undoubtedly knew that she had married Worth, it was crucial to establish the fiction early, so that in later years she could point to it as proof of respectability, not a youthful scrape that ended in divorce. 

The other thing that stands out is the fact that Sadie and all her family are unequivocally listed as white. Furthermore, the Barr's are not listed on any tribal census in the area, confirming the belief of the census taker that they were white. So where is the "Indian wife" that caused the rupture between Worth and his family? And where was Virginia Morgan, the daughter of this ill-advised marriage? I had more questions than answers at this point, so I started a quest for a possible second marriage and an unknown great-Aunt.

Thank you for reading my first Ancestor of the Week, part one! I plan to have part two up on Friday. As always, I welcome questions and comments!