Where to Start: Patrick J. Morgan -- A Sometimes Coach Driver of Yarmouthport, MA

 Where to Start: Patrick J. Morgan

A Sometimes Coach Driver of Yarmouthport, MA


There really is no perfect place to start this blog.  No one family story or ancestor that fully introduces the conversation of my family history. There are several individuals that stand out of course, and they will get their due. But I start with what I knew when I began my research:  we were Irish.


No major traditional Cape surnames were immediately apparent.  My father who arrived on the Cape in the 40’s from the Midwest was of Swiss and German descent. He brought us the last name of Bear which is an interesting and honorable last name to have but it is equally worthy of schoolhouse teasing.  Think … “I saw Julie Bear …”. 


My mother was a Morgan. Her father Vernon was a colorful and kind character in his own right. He was loved by many and … he was Irish.  That’s what I knew. Somewhere in the back of my mind or perhaps a wisp of an early memory of a conversation, was that someone in my Morgan family line had met his wife on a coach stop at the Old Yarmouth Inn where she was working.  How great! But really?


In 1968 Vernon Morgan wrote an autobiographical piece for the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth in which he shared childhood recollections.  One item he mentioned was that his grandfather Patrick Morgan was a sometimes coach driver, and the Yarmouth Inn had been a stop on the old stage route.  Yarmouth records identify Patrick Morgan most often as “laborer;” Patrick Morgan’s death certificate calls him a stonemason.  My grandfather Vernon also did some stone mason work among many things, and he built the stone chimney at the house I grew up in at 87 Old Main Street in Yarmouth. 


Local newspaper accounts represented that Patrick Morgan was a farmer and avid gardener selling vegetables and cut wood from his home on Summer Street across from what is now the Woodside Cemetery by Dennis Pond.  Certainly a poor Irish immigrant on Cape Cod would not be accounted for anywhere outside his small community but I threw his name into newspapers.com and found the 1890 article below wherein Patrick described to the correspondent the struggles of driving the coach in Yarmouth during inclement weather.  According to the article, Patrick Morgan was a driver for fourteen years and on one particular occasion had driven a sea captain and company from the Yarmouth Railroad Station to Dennis.  His description of the winter drive is wonderfully detailed.  And while this is a great piece of information to have, and gives a voice to my ancestor I would not have otherwise, it does not account for how he met his wife, also an Irish immigrant. It does however make it entirely possible that the story is true.




Patrick Morgan was born in Ireland approximately 1833 and died at his home on Summer Street in Yarmouth Port in 1907.  He arrived in New York in the year 1853 and appears in a Yarmouth Census record in 1855 as an Irish laborer in the home of Edward Thacher.  Patrick applied for and became a naturalized citizen in 1876. He is buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Hyannis, Massachusetts with his wife Mary Howard and son James.  James worked for the railroad and died of injuries sustained when thrown from the top of a car in Orleans, MA.  My great grandfather is Patrick's son William. Where and how did Patrick Morgan get to Yarmouth and Summer Street in particular?  Please see an upcoming and more detailed post on my great great grandfather Patrick Morgan.



Sources:


Image by Gordon Johnson via Pixabay


Ancestry.com


Sturgislibrary.org


Familysearch.org


Morgan, Vernon, 1968, I Remember Old Yarmouth, copy obtained from HSOY.


The Boston Globe, February 2, 1890, Page 19. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe-patrick-morgan-stage-dr/124921388/ : accessed June 26, 2023), clip page for Patrick Morgan Stage Driver


Location: Yarmouth, MA, USA

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