Who is Annie Mildred Smith Morgan?

(Besides being John Morgan's second wife.)

Depending on where you look, you can find many different dates for Annie Mildred Smith Morgan's birth:

• 7 March 1860 or 1862 in Pinkridge or Penkridge, Staffordshire, England (from a record compiled by Mary Ann Linton Morgan)
  
• 1844 in Greensburg, Decatur, Indiana (from Ancestral File)
  
• 7 March 1863 in Preston, England (from rootsweb)
• 1844 with her name listed as Adalinda Annie Mildred Gwendoline Smith (from new.familysearch.org)
• 1864 (the headstone on her grave)
  

Unfortunately such a situation is not uncommon in genealogy. We will explore this problem a bit. First stop, the U.S. Census.

Here is the page from the 1900 census of Manassa, Conejos, Colorado that shows the widowed Annie and her four living children, Annie Ray (15), John (11), Ivy (9), and Joseph (5). It shows her birth date as March 1864 in England. Add another option to the list.


Next stop: the IGI.

The first search on Adalinda Smith finds the following records:

Adalinda Annies [sic] Mildred Gwendoline Smith born 7 March 1863 in Preston, England, married to John Morgan, born 8 August 1842 Greensburg, Decatur, Indiana. No date is given for the marriage.

Source: Sealings of couples, living and by proxy 1851-1889 Endowment House (Film or fiche #183402, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

Adalinda Annie Mildred Gwendoline Smith born 7 March 1860 in Penkridge, Stafford, England, to Joseph and Sophia Pickstock Perry Smith. It shows a marriage date of 25 January 1884 and a death date of 3 April 1935. In this record, her father Joseph Smith was born in 1830, married in Lancashire, England, and died in 1912 in Manassa, Conejos, Colorado. Looks like we might be able to reconstruct her family.

Source: Sealings for the dead, couples and children (includes some living spouses and children) 1943-1970; heir indexes, 1943-1965. Salt Lake Temple. (Film or fiche number 457240, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

Adalinda Alise Mildred Gwendoline Smith born 7 March 1863 Preston Hill, Stafford, England to Joseph and Sophia Perry Smith.

Source: Endowments of the living, 1851-1884, Endowment House. (Film or fiche number 183408, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

The first question I will ask is whether any of these places are real or near each other. Google maps shows that Preston Hill Farm is located in Penkridge, Staffordshire, England. Looks like the location is actually fairly consistent.

Now I will take a step back and google the name of Annie's parents together with a location of Manassa. This comes up with the cemetery records for the Old Manassa Cemetery. Of interest are a child of John and Annie and Annie's parents:

Morgan, Myrtle 3 Jun 1887 28 Jul 1890
John Morgan Anna Smith

Smith, Joseph 1829/1830 14 Oct 1912 Sophia Perry
Joseph Smith

Another record: the 1911 Manassa Town Directory lists Mrs. Anna M. Morgan and also John A. & Eva Morgan (rancher) (her son John Albemarle Morgan and his wife Eva Block Morgan). Also Joseph Smith, her father, with no profession listed.

So what do I know now? That she gave her name as Anna, that her parents were Joseph and Sophia Perry Smith, that she was married to John Morgan in the Endowment House probably on 25 January 1884, and that when she was endowed (the earliest of all these records), she gave her birthdate and place as 7 March 1863 Preston Hill, (Penkridge,) Stafford, England. She died in 1935 and was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah. As far as I'm concerned, for my current purposes, this information is "good enough."

I would love to know more, so if any descendants of this family happen to see this post, I would be interested in more accurate, documented information.

The picture of Manassa farmland is from www.flickr.com/photos/slvnative/1415144929/.