If you walk around the side of the little old church in Omena, you come to an overgrown cemetery. And if you look for it, you will see a beautiful little headstone that says, “Frank A. Morgan, Son of J. D. and A. G. Morgan, Died Feb. 16, 1863: Age 9 yrs. 4 mos.”. There is a beautiful little rose carved above Frankie’s name.
Who was little Frankie Morgan?
In 1852 before Frankie was born, his parents moved here at the same time. Rev. Dougherty moved to Omena with his band of Indians. However, Jessie and Ann settled in Northport rather than with Rev Dougherty in Omena.
The following year, 1863, their first child, Franklin, was born. They called him Frankie. Years later Ann had another baby and named him Norman.
Rev Dougherty “did not keep Jesse on his team” after the move, and Jesse, with time on his hands, spent most of his time and money in the local saloons. Ann had a difficult time during those years, and had to take in washing, mending, and sewing and cleaning houses to support her little family.
They lived in a small log cabin abandoned by the Indians. It was cold and damp, the chinking was falling out between the logs, and the cedar bark roof had curled up. When it rained Ann had to put old quilts and boards over her furniture to protect it from the dripping water. Ann later told his son Norman that they owed their lives to their kind neighbors who kept them from starving during those first years.
Civil War Began
A number of Northport volunteers went to Chicago and enlisted in the Union Army. Jesse Morgan was among them. Frankie was nine years old and little Norman was only four when their father left. His wages in the service were so small that he had nothing left to send home to Ann.
Thankfully, her old friend and Jesse’s former employer, Rev Dougherty, kindly offered Ann a position at the New Mission School in Omena. She accepted immediately and moved there with her boys. She taught the Indian girls to sew, cook and do household tasks. They could live in the boarding house which was very comfortable compared to her log home. Her boys could attend the school with the Indian children.
Scarlett Fever
Things were finally easier for Ann. But then Frankie became terribly ill with Scarlet Fever, and with no medical help available, after a few days he died. One can only imagine how grief-stricken this mother was when, on a bitter cold day in February of 1863, she had to bring her little boy’s body down from the Mission for burial behind the little church on the hill.
This was the only cemetery for Omena people beginning in 1855. From the time Chief Ahgosa’s band came to buy land near Omena, forty-three years passed before the Township bought land for the larger Omena cemetery, today’s Hillcrest cemetery. So even though this little burial ground by the church is called an Indian cemetery, some of Omena’s earliest white settlers were also buried here prior to 1898.
Jesse does not return from the War
As for Frankie’s mother, Ann, she had not had time to recover from the shock of losing her little boy when she received another blow. Her husband Jesse was never going to return from the war. He had contracted a disease in the service and had died in a hospital near Little Rock, Arkansas. So, in 1863 she lost her child and became a widow with a four-year-old child to care for.
She still had her job at the mission and was able to work and live there for the next two years, but in 1865, due to circumstances beyond his control, Rev. Peter Dougherty was forced to close the mission school and Ann was once again without a regular income.
Ann’s life after this continues to be a fascinating twist and turn of events. I will tell you more about that later.
Courtesy Omena Historical Society’s archives for sharing the writings of Elizabeth Craker Armstrong