
| Married on June 4, 1932 |






















| The one thing we know for sure about Grandfather Floyd Morgan's early life is that he was hospitalized with a concussion and major head trauma when he was about twenty years of age. On his way to work one day, as he was in the process of getting off of a streetcar, his pants got snagged by an automobile that was trying to get around the streetcar, but go too close. Grandmother Morgan wrote in a letter to one of her children: "the lady driving the car didn't know she was dragging him along. People kept hollering at her to stop. She had no idea why. By the time she stopped he already had brain damage and was delirious for days. He only came out of the comma when his dear mother (Ida Shawen Morgan) arrived at the hospital. She held his hand and said 'sonny boy...sunny boy.' Every one was amazed when he suddenly responded to her voice." It was while he was recovering from his head wounds that Grandmother Bertha Morgan's older sister, Mary Ferenbach Beil, introduced Bertha to Floyd. Joe Beil, Mary's husband, was Floyd's best friend at the time. Bertha was immediately attracted to Floyd because she thought he had such beautiful big, brown eyes. Their relationship did not progress very far, though, because she had already decided she wanted to follow in the footsteps of the "Little Flower", St. Theresa of Lisieux, by becoming a Carmelite Nun. Before she entered the convent, however, she did have at least one date with Floyd in which she said that if she ever did get married, the man she married would have to have at least two thousand dollars in the bank. One can understand such a desire from a young lady who grew up in relative poverty on a family farm near Jerseyville, Illinois, but one can only marvel at her prescience. The stock market crash of 1929 occurred the very next year. |








| Bertha entered the Carmelite Monastery in St. Louis when she was twenty years of age, but her stay there lasted only two years. She had assumed that devoting herself to the religious life would mean that she could spend a majority of her time praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the monastery chapel. Her assumption proved wrong. In fact, she was allowed very little time to pray in the chapel. Instead she was required to clean floors and do other domestic tasks like coking and baking and doing dishes. She had also assumed that the religious community she was entering would be characterized by love and kindness. This assumption proved wrong as well. In fact, she was required to wear not only different but a poorer quality of clothing than that worn by the other postulants, and made to feel as though she was actually a servant to the other postulants. So she decided to practice her faith in a less demeaning way. |
| Soon after Bertha left the convent, her sister Mary once again invited her to her home. And, once again, the young Floyd Morgan was waiting there to see her. Amazingly, even though two years had passed, Floyd still had to wear a white hat to protect the still healing wound on the back of his head. The very presence of this skull cap indicated just how slowly his head wound was healing. Neither of them knew at the time that this head would eventually lead to his untimely death just twenty years later. Nor did they know, at the time, that the two of them would bring eleven children into this world during that twenty year period. One thing they did know for certain was that Floyd had not saved up that two thousand dollars which Bertha thought she deserved from any man who wanted to marry her. He explained to her that she was convinced she would remain in the convent, and therefore he spent the only money he was able to save buying new furniture for his mother. She figured that anyone who would do something so wonderful for his mother, especially during those Depression years, must be pretty special. The rest is Morgan Family history. Their wedding took place on June 4, 1932, at the Church of the Holy Ghost in Jerseyville, Illinois. They were both twenty-three years of age at the time, although he was eight months her junior. After the wedding they drove fifteen miles south to Alton, Illinois, to have their picture taken by a professional photographer. They got married during the Great Depression, and did not have much money for a honeymoon, but they were able to borrow a relative's car for one week. In essence, their honeymoon consisted of their driving from one relative to another as they continued the celebration of their marriage. At night they stayed at the Ferenbach homestead, which gave Floyd's mother-in-law the opportunity to play a practical joke on him. While he and his bride were out making the rounds visiting his new relatives, Katerina crawled under the wedding couple's bed and tied a cowbell to the springs beneath the mattress. Great Grandmother Ferenbach obviously had a less serious side that was not readily captured by the camera. |
| The first child of Floyd and Bertha was born nine months and twenty days later. It was the first of many children to come, but none of them would have been born if Bertha had followed her doctor's orders. He told her that because of her physical condition, the nature of which he never explained to her satisfaction, a second pregnancy would threaten her life. In the end they had eleven children during their time together, Floyd and Bertha had another pregnancy that never came to term. It was an ectopic (i.e., outside the womb) pregnancy that occurred between what were the seventh and eighth full term births, and it was the closest Bertha came to that gave prediction given by her doctor following her very first delivery. Since grandmother was in the hospital, and grandfather needed to work every day, someone need to take care of the seven Morgan children. The oldest, my mother Margaret, was only eight years of age, and the youngest was just nine months at the time. The solution was to place them in the German St. Vincent Orphanage in St. Louis, for at least a month during grandmother's stay in the hospital and her subsequent recuperation at home. Their eleven children were: Marge (b. 1933), Anna (b. 1934), Tom (b. 1935), Joe (b. 1936), Bernie (b. 1938), Larry (b. 1939), Frank (b. 1940), Pete (b. 1942), Kay (b. 1944, d. 2001), Jim (b. 1946), and Chris (1950). |








| Floyd Thomas Morgan (b. 1904 in East St. Louis, Il., d. 1953 in St. Louis Mo.) Married June 4, 1932, in Jerseyville, Illinois Bertha Elizabeth Ferenbach, (b. 1908 in Fieldon, IL, d. 1998 in St. Louis, Mo.) They had 11 children:
John Anthony Maurer, Jr. (b. 1952 in St. Louis, Mo.) 1. Michael Thomas "Mick" Maurer (alias Floyd) 2. John Anthony Maurer, III 3. Laura Jean Maurer 4. Teresa Ann Maurer 5. Marilyn Elizabeth Maurer 6. Janet Marie Maurer
Thomas Joseph Krupinski (b. ?0 1. Belinda Ann Krupinski 2. Christopher Thomas Krupinski 3. Anthony Joseph Krupinski 4. Michelle Marie Krupinski
Martha Sue Chamberlain (b. ?) 1. Daniel Thomas Morgan 2. David Joseph Morgan 3. Donna Ann Morgan 4. Paul Michael Morgan
Diana Eileen Schneider (b. ?) 1. Scott Joseph Morgan 2. Steven James Morgan 3. Robert Patrick Morgan 4. Catherine Elizabeth Morgan 5. James Charles Morgan 6. Timothy Michael Morgan 7. Laura Ann Morgan
John Anthony Polizzi (b. ?) 1. Anthony John Polizzi 2.Gina Maria Polizzi and Married on August 11, 1984 in Popular Bluff, Mo. Dennis Dean Doyle (b. ?)
Flora Abui Immaculata Fumey (b. ?) 1. Nicholad Kojo Morgan 2. Narissa Ann Frances Morgan 3. Esi Marie Morgan 4. adopted Maxwell Takyi Opoku Morgan
Mary Francis Finney (b. ?) 1. John Morgan
Judith Ann Pratt (b. ?) 1. Lance Matthew Morgan 2. Christy Renee Morgan 3. Kevin Matthew Morgan
Jack William Weston (b. ?) 1. Richard Tyler Weston 2. John Thomas Weston 3. Mark William Weston
Barbara Louise Garegnani 1. Steven James Morgan 2. Jayne Kristen Morgan 3. Beth Suzanne Morgan
Karen Sue Brunnert 1. Kelly Marie Morgan 2. Kimberly Rae Morgan |



















| Some of my mom's memories from growing up: "Late summer and early fall when I was 8 years old mother had a tubal pregnancy and was hospitalized. There were seven of us then and no one to care for us while Daddy worked. The first two weeks we had two different women who came into our home to care for us. Neither wanted to stay on so we went to St. Vincent’s Orphanage until mother was strong enough again. I went along with Sister when she took baby Frank and toddler Larry for walks. They missed their mother so Sister thought I was a help for them. During the day I made stops in the nursery to play with them. Once a week we all had to eat a dish of sauerkraut. You could not leave the table until you finished. Every week Sister would call me and ask in could help Bernadette finish her bowl. I don't know about Berni but I can't stand the smell of sauerkraut and I sure do not eat it anymore. Our Grandmother Ferenbach lived on a farm in Jerseyville, Illinois. I remember spending lots of fun days there visiting her and seeing the rest of the Ferenbach clan. It was fun sometimes being allowed to collect eggs from the chicken house, and we could pick lots of blackberries in the woods. Blackberries are still one of my favorite fruits. The one thing we didn't like very much was using the Outhouse. We were use to inside plumbing at home. I remember playing cow chip dodge ball with our cousins. We had a lot of fun. We did a little milking of the cows but mostly we just watched. We also were allowed to churn the cream into butter. Lots of fun things we couldn't do at home. We enjoyed listening to Grandmother Ferenbach talking in the German language. We could figure out what she was saying with Mother's help. She always had a smile and a big hug for us. There was no electric at Grandma's house until our Dad installed it for her. I remember him doing that. Before that she used kerosene lanterns. There was no running water in the house. We used to pump water from a well in the back yard by the porch. Grandma used a wood burning stove to cook. She had a large vegetable garden that she worked in everyday. She also had a large flower garden by the vegetable garden. I guess that is why our Mother had such a green thumb. She learned from her Mother. Grandmother Ferenbach died when I was in the 7th grade and she was buried on Christmas Eve. I will always remember that year and that Christmas. The Crib was set up in church but there was no Baby Jesus yet in the Crib. I think of it every year on Christmas Day looking at the crib in our church. When we returned to St. Louis that Christmas Eve poor dad was running all over town looking for Christmas gifts and a tree. It was pretty late in the day. I was old enough to help out with the tree and getting things together. It is being together that makes Christmas fun so with a tree decorated and with Mother's cookies I remember it being a Special Day. I did not visit at the farm again until my 3rd year of high school. My cousin Paul Kenny Ferenbach was killed in a car accident on New Year's Eve. He was my age and also in the 3rd year of high school. That was a very sad day. He was an only child and his parents pride and joy. He was a lot of fun and a favorite of mine. Since we didn't have a car and Daddy and Mother relied on friends and relatives for rides there were just too many of us to take out to visit relatives. So after Paul's funeral my next visit was after I had married and had two or three children. We went to a family reunion. Grandmother Ida Morgan, my Dad's mother, died when I was one year old, so I don't remember her at all. We saw Grandpa Michael Morgan, my Dad's Father several times a year for short visits. He lived in East St. Louis so without a car visiting wasn't easy. He didn't drive either. Not many memories. I remember him being at my First Communion Party and also at my Wedding. I received a very special wedding gift from Grandpa. It is eight - 4 pc. Place settings of silver plated flatware by Roger Bros. which came in a wooden chest. I still have all the pieces in perfect condition and I have always used it for holidays and birthdays and parties. He didn't have much money so I appreciate his special gift. Daddy's sister, Edna Mae, always did such nice things for all of us. I still have the gold cross she gave me for my First Communion and the gold locket she gave me for my 8th grade graduation. They both are engraved with my initials and the date. At one of the family showers I had at my house I showed them to her and she was amazed I still had them so many years later. My daughter Teri was married on the same day I made my First Communion in May. She wore my Communion Cross on her Wedding Day. While in grade school W orId War II was taking place. We would listen to the news of the war on the radio and we would see clips at the movies. Daddy tried to enlist in the army. He could have made more money because of all of the children. They paid you for each child. They didn't want him leaving all those children so they said NO. Daddy and his friend Howard Hoogie had a V for Victory Vegetable Garden on a vacant lot somewhere in the city. They worked together on the garden. This was during the war. Lots of things were rationed and you were given coupons to purchase things like meat, tires, shoes, gas. These items were needed for the troops. We received more coupons than most because of our large family. Everyone was happy to take what we didn't use and they were always asking if we had some to spare." |
| More of my mom's memories: "While I was in grade school I can remember washing lots and lots of dishes. We had oatmeal most mornings for breakfast. There were many bowls and pans with oatmeal stuck to them and they were very hard to clean. Oatmeal really sticks to your ribs and also to the dishes like glue. I now gag when I see oatmeal. I just cannot eat it anymore. It is one of my husband Mick’s favorite cereals, but he fixes it for himself in the microwave and he cleans his own dish. I still like oatmeal raisin cookies, which Mother made a lot of when we were young. Our children remember their Grandmother for her chocolate chip cookies, but the cookies she always made for us were oatmeal raisin. There were no chocolate chips when we were small. Our birthdays were always celebrated with a cake, usually Angel Food, and a special dinner of the food we liked if possible. I have no memory of gifts. I am sure they were new shoes or something we needed. Summer Treat - When the weather was nice I think it was probably about once a month, Daddy and Mother took us to an ice cream store named Josie's on Friday evenings. It was maybe eight blocks away. I remember banana splits, sundaes and cones or small dishes for the little ones. It was a nice treat enjoyed by all. I remember eating carrot and raisin sandwiches for lunch at school Mother grated the carrots and mixed with mayo and raisins. They were really good but my friends didn't think so. I still really like carrot salad today. Mother was into healthy eating long before everyone else. Dad built a balance beam for us to walk on in our back yard. It was a 2 x 4 built about a foot high off the ground. We use to walk back and forth. All ages could use it. We also had a swing set to play on. Did you know we had a red ceiling in our kitchen on Garnier St. One day Daddy was hitting a ketchup bottle and the ketchup suddenly popped out and hit the ceiling. We all had a good laugh. They couldn't get it cleaned off of the white ceiling. The red kept showing through, so they painted the ceiling red. On big shopping days Daddy went to A&P for groceries. I went along a lot of times as I got older so I could help carry. We would walk to the store, which was by Bevo Mill, and take the bus home to Chippewa St. When I was old enough on Gamier I went to the Colonial Bread Bakery to buy day old bread. A lot of people did that and still do. We bought a lot of loaves and Mother did the rest of the baking. I always took someone along to help. We never traveled alone to the store. We also walked to Bailey Farm Dairy when I was old enough. The milk was in glass bottles and they were hard to carry. They were very slippery and heavy. We dropped a few so we really didn't save much money. There were no plastic or paper cartons back then. We also had a milkman deliver milk and ice to our door." |

| The first Christmas they were married Marge and Mick decided to give Floyd and Bertha the statue of Our Lady of Fatima and new rosaries for each of them. "They had a statue of Mary but I thought they should have the Rosary Mary. She later became known as the "Miracle on Michigan". Daddy was buried with his new rosary. Mother gave the statue back to me when she sold her home and downsized. Mary is now at our home." The “Miracle on Michigan,” was an event that convinced Bertha once again that God was with her and her children. This event took place about a year after the death of our father. Our dad died relatively suddenly, when only forty-three years of age, from an abscess that developed within his brain. We believe that the head wounds he received twenty years earlier finally proved fatal. Following the loss of her husband, and with her older children begining to move away to begin new lives on their own, Bertha realized that she was beginning a new phase in her own life as well. She was now a single mother, and although she had more than half a dozen children still under her care, she decided they no longer needed to take care of such a large home. So she placed the Michigan Avenue house on the real estate market, and then devoted her energies to a major house cleaning, including redoing rooms that needed fresh coats of paint. The house sold relatively quickly, mainly because it had received such special care, but the very day after the sale a fire broke out in the downstairs’ dining room. No one knows who was responsible for starting the fire, whether it was caused by one of the younger children playing with matches or one of the older children carelessly leaving a lit cigarette on top of the wooden highboy cabinet where the fire originated. All that is known for sure is that the fire started sometime late at night, smoldered in or on the highboy all night long while filling the house with smoke, and eventually broke into flames early the next morning when Bertha, alarmed by the smoke, led her children down the stairs to the outside, had a neighbor call the fire department, and then went back into the house and opened the door to the dining room. According to the firemen, who arrived very quickly to put out the fire, it was the opening of the door that caused most of the damage to the dining room walls and ceiling. The opened door allowed an incoming supply of oxygen to feed a fire that had merely been smoldering up until that time. Some may have thought it was a miracle that the house did not burn down during the night, when the children might have been trapped up on the second floor. Others may have thought it was a miracle that the new owners still wanted to go ahead with the sale of the house in spite of the fire and subsequent water damage to the dining room walls and ceiling. However, neither of these good fortunes constituted what was to become known as the legendary “Miracle on Michigan.” What many of our Catholic neighbors marveled at, when looking at the fire damage to the house, was the statue of the Blessed Mother located on top of the highboy cabinet. The wall behind the cabinet and the ceiling above it, as well as the cabinet itself and everything around it, were still hot and black with soot when the firemen left; everything, that is, except the statue of the Blessed Mother. It was as if it were totally untouched by the fire that surrounded it. It had no soot on it and, most amazingly, it was very cool to the touch. It didn’t take long before the Catholic kids in the neighborhood were telling each other with amazement about the “Miracle on Michigan.” Bertha agreed with them. She believed that the Blessed Mother had protected her and her children during this major transition in her life, just as her mother believed the Blessed Mother had protected her during her major life transition from Germany to America. To give the reader a better feeling for the part religion played in Bertha’s life, in addition to her daily attendance at mass and her daily recitation of the rosary. After every evening meal Bertha required all of her children to kneel down around the dinner table and recite the family rosary. Leaning on dining room chairs and squirming were all little knees could do to get periodic relief from the hard rug-less floors. Any of our friends who happened to be at our house at the time, including any dates that came calling on our sisters, had to kneel down with our family for the duration of whatever decades of the rosary were left to recite. Over the years our mother kept adding various favorite prayers to the end of the rosary, so much so that these dreary litanies were almost as lengthy as the five decades of beads themselves. Like her mother before her, our mother also went from bedroom to bedroom each night sprinkling her children with Holy Water to ward off every kind of evil. |


| Floyd started working early in life, having finished only the fourth grade of public schooling. His first major job was for Western Union, in downtown St. Louis, where he rode a bicycle to deliver messages and telegrams. Eventually he was hired by the American District Telegraph (ADT) security company, initially as an armed responder to security alarms (pictured here second from the left), and finally as a district supervisor. (In 1909 Western Union and ADT had become subsidiaries of AT&T.) We also know that his two brothers, Michael and Edward, worked as steamfitters in the East St. Louis area. Most of his children have few memories of their father because he often worked on different time shifts at American District Telegraph (ADT), and because he sometimes held a second job that kept him away from home some evenings and even on some Saturdays. The older kids remember how he loved to read the newspaper, and how he used to fold it so he could read it while standing on the crowded buses that took him to and from his job at ADT. Some of them remember interrupting his reading of the Sunday paper to get his permission to go with their friends to see a movie at the Michigan or Virginia theaters. He would always say “Go ask your Mother,” knowing full well that she just said “Go ask your Father.” Floyd died relatively suddenly, when only forty-three years of age, from an abscess that developed within his brain. We believe that the head wounds he received twenty years earlier finally proved fatal. When he was hospitalized with a concussion and major head trauma when he was about twenty years of age. In the process of getting off of a streetcar, his pants got snagged by an automobile that was trying to get around the streetcar, but got too close and was drug for blocks. |





| In addition to teaching her children to turn to God in time of need, she also taught them to help each other as a family by sharing “the fruit of their bounty.” This was accomplished primarily by each child giving her a meaningful part of their paychecks, once they started working, to help support the running of the household. Many of the older siblings also volunteered to buy gifts for the younger children, especially around the Christmas season. Our mother was not able to save very much money until after all eleven children were making it on their own, and until after they all got together to feather her nest by paying off the remaining mortgage on her home at 4172 Walsh Street. Bertha was then able to leave over sixteen hundred dollars to each of her children, close to the amount she herself had received upon the death of her mother. Recalling how important that inheritance proved to be in her life, it was her dream to be able to leave a similarly useful amount of money to her children upon her death. It is quite remarkable that she was able to save that amount of money over the years, considering the various living and health care expenses that quickly deplete the life savings of the elderly. The very last expense she incurred, at her request, was to pay for the meal of thanksgiving her children and grandchildren shared with each other in her memory on the day of her funeral mass and burial. The legacy of Floyd and Bertha Morgan was not the money they left to their children, or even the incredible amount of work they did to keep them housed and clothed and fed and educated and prayerful, none of which can be directly translated into the current financial assets of their progeny. The legacy of Floyd and Bertha Morgan are the children who wrote a book in their honor, and the grandchildren and great grandchildren down through the ages who will read this book and marvel at the wonderful stories being told by their ancestors. We can then join with Bertha and Floyd in acknowledging that we are part of a divine mystery much greater than we can ever hope to understand. We can also join with them as they bestow the prayer and the blessing of “God be with you” to each of their eleven children: Marge (1933), Anna (1934), Tom (1935), Joe (1936), Berni (1938), Larry (1939), Frank (1940), Pete (1942), Kay (1944-2001), Jim (1946), and Chris (1950). GBWY |


| At the time of her death, on January 28, 1998, in her ninetieth year, she left a major part of herself on this earth through 11 children, 38 grandchildren, 51 great grandchildren, and one great, great grandchild. Ten additional great grandchildren plus a second great, great grandchild have been born since then. |












