John Morrison
John Morrison was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, on 14 April 1850, a son of Allen Morrison. Ayrshire is the coal and farming county on the southwest coast of Scotland, facing the Firth of Clyde.
By the beginning of 1874 he was living at Newburg in Preston County, West Virginia, a town on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the hills east of Fairmont. On 21 January 1874 he took out a licence at the county court to marry Anna Ford. The clerk asked his age and wrote "24 years April 24th 1874", meaning he would be twenty four that spring. He gave his birthplace as Ayrshire County, Scotland. Anna was twenty three, born in Preston County, and living at Newburg too. Samuel Graham married them on 27 January 1874 at the house of a Mrs. M. E. Bartlett.
Their first child, Margaret W., was born on 11 July 1875 in Iowa. They did not stay. Their son Ernest Sylvester was born on 12 August 1877, back in Preston County. John Allen followed about 1880, then Carl, and Robert Thomas on 10 October 1885. Carl died young. By 1900 Anna counted five children born and four living.
By 1894 the family had a house at Palatine, on the east bank of the Monongahela at Fairmont. On 11 August of that year Margaret, nineteen, took out a licence to marry Guy F. Leonard, and because she was under age the clerk wrote at the head of the page: "Written consent of John & Annie Morrison. father of Margaret." The wedding was the next day, at the Morrisons' own house, with the pastor of the Methodist Protestant church officiating.
In 1900 the census taker found him at Fairmont, in the first ward, which had taken in Palatine the year before. He was entered as Johnny Morrison, born April 1850 in Scotland, married twenty six years, with Anne and three grown sons at home: Ernest, Allen and Robert.
He outlived his daughter and his wife. Margaret died on 18 February 1913, leaving six children. Anna died on 14 June 1914 at the house of their son Ernest. Her obituary says the two of them had just built a new house on the East Side and would have moved into it soon.
He spent his last winter in Preston County, where he had married. A newspaper reported that Johnny Morrison, seventy six, died on 14 March 1926 at the home of Thomas Haskell near Howesville, where he had been staying since Christmas, and was buried at Fairmont. His death certificate, filed at Kingwood the next day, gives a widower born 14 April 1850 in Scotland, retired, dead of hardening of the arteries after three days' paralysis. It names his father as Allen Morrison of Scotland and says his mother was born in Scotland too, though the informant, Ruth Heiskell of Howesville, did not know her name. He was buried on 16 March in Maple Grove Cemetery at Fairmont, where Anna and Margaret already lay.
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Cite: Heirology, "John Morrison (1850-1926)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-morrison-1850-1926-5aba66.