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Annie L.
Morrison--Homesteader, Teacher, Journalist, Historian:
"I think I have written a truthful history...."
The history of San Luis Obispo has
been told in many ways--in memoirs and diaries, in first-person accounts,
in newspaper and magazine articles, in amateur and professional
publications, and in "subscription histories," often called
"mug books"--those publications paid for, at least in part, by
the people who are profiled within.
Mug books
pertaining to our county include Myron Angel's 1883 History of San
Luis Obispo County, Yda Addis Storke's 1891 A Memorial and
Biographical History of the Counties of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo,
and Ventura, California, and the 1939 History of San Luis Obispo County, State of California: Its
People and Its Resources, edited by Chris Jespersen. As
historian Mark Hall-Patton has noted, these mug books, although not
always comprehensive, are invaluable for researchers.
The 1917 mug book by Annie L. Morrison and John H. Haydon entitled History
of San Luis Obispo County and Environs, is one of the most
interesting of these county mug books. Morrison covered the parts
of the book relating to San Luis Obispo County, while Haydon wrote the sections on
Santa Maria and environs. Morrison's overview of SLO county
history covers 122 pages, and is followed by hundreds of graceful
profiles of residents who were able and willing to pay for coverage in
the book, and who relied on the author for a favorable rendering of
their personalities and achievements. Morrison's writing manages
to seem positive without being obsequious, and her keen eye for detail
and her lively anecdotes make her work enjoyable reading, even 90 years
later.
Annie Morrison's obituary in the May 24, 1943 issue of the
Telegram-Tribune, begins as follows:
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"After a long life of
82 years, many of which were spent in San Luis Obispo county, Mrs.
Annie L. Morrison died peacefully at her home Sunday afternoon,
May 23.
Mrs. Morrison came as a bride to
Templeton, in April, 1887, when that town was a terminus of the
Southern Pacific railroad, and had lived in this county ever
since.
She was born Annie Louise
Stringfellow, at Sycamore, Illinois...in 1860...." |
But the best chronicler of
Morrison's life was Morrison herself. Her self-profile, written
in the third person, is included in her 1917 mug book, and is reproduced
here.
***
Annie
Morrison on Annie Morrison:
pp.
259-260 from her History of
SLO
County
and Environs:
A native of Illinois, Mrs.
Morrison was born in Sycamore, November 22, 1860, a daughter of Benjamin
Franklin Stringfellow, born in Pennsylvania, November 7, 1828, and of
English extraction on the paternal side, while the mother, whose maiden
name was Annie Archer, was of French descent.
Her grandfather was sent from
France
by his family with valuable papers, jewels, and money, to escape the
terrors of the French Revolution, and he came to Philadelphia. Her mother was Mary Jane Barton, born in
Ireland
but brought to Philadelphia
by her parents when she was an infant.
Mary Barton was the daughter of Willis and Rebecca (Smith)
Barton. The Barton family
were from the north of
Ireland. They were Protestants,
originally from Scotland, where the name was Dumbarton. Mr.
Morrison’s father and mother were married in
Philadelphia, November 4, 1852, by Rev. Charles Demmi, and began married life at
Darby,
Delaware
County,
Penn.
There her father was badly
hurt by one of his horses, being kicked on the knee; and as a
consequence he was in a hospital in Philadelphia
for more than a year. He
came out very lame and unable to work, and his wife supported him and
herself by sewing, the hospital having absorbed all their money.
At last her father decided he would “go West,” and in the
late fifties went to Sycamore, Ill.
Her parents had a large family, eight of whom lived to be men and
women, and one of her earliest memories is that of seeing her mother
with a little bundle of baby’s clothes which she would caress and cry
over, telling the children they belonged to their little brother Willie,
her first son, who died when he was six months old.
Her parents never amassed much property.
Times during the Civil War were hard, the children many,
and they early learned to help themselves.
However, her mother, on the little she had to do with, kept her
children neat, in school, and at Sunday school, and instilled into them
the principles of decent, honorable living.
Her father had a very good mentality, and his children inherited
brains. Mrs. Morrison also
inherited her father’s near-sighted eyes, and says she has lost, in
consequence, half the joy of living; for even with glasses, she has
never been able to see much of the beauty in nature that many others,
blessed with good eyesight, do not properly value.
With her brothers and sisters, she attended school in Sycamore.
Her oldest brother, Bennie, was a fine boy, very good to them
all, and very devoted to his mother.
He became a fine mechanic and at twenty was pattern-maker in a
big foundry. The other
brothers, Harry and John, are well-to-do farmers—Harry in
Iowa
and John near Sycamore, Ill.
Three sisters, Mary,
Caroline, and Mabel, are married to farmers.
One sister, Elizabeth, has never married; and she keeps house for
her bachelor brother John.
In spite of her near-sighted eyes, Mrs. Morrison was a sort of
wonder in school. She
learned marvelously easy, could sing and 'speak pieces,' and soon
acquired the ability to do well a few things all the others couldn’t
do. She liked to lead, and
could get a following, and says, "I
smile as I think of the joy of the little girl whose best dress was a
clean calico, when she reached the place where girls in pretty dresses
asked ‘Annie’ if they could play with her crowd.
I had been sneered at because of coarse shoes and sunbonnets by
these same girls, so it was only getting my innings, for it had cost my
little soul hours of bitterness when they had twitted me of my lack of
finery.” She early
learned to pit brains and character against mere moneybags, and has
never found it worthwhile to change their relation.
At the age of thirteen, she went to town and worked for a Mrs.
Pitcher for five months, at one dollar a week, to earn money for books
and clothes so as to go on into high school.
She worked for her board until [age] fifteen and went to school,
working vacations to earn money for books and clothes.
At Mrs. Pitcher’s, she met Duane J. Carnes, a law student, who
became a power in her life. He
is now Judge of the Appellate Court of Illinois.
He directed her reading and to him and his parents she owes much.
By the time she was fifteen, she had read all of Scott,
Shakespeare, Dickens, Macaulay, Thackeray, and George Eliot...and the American poets were bosom friends.
At the age of fifteen and one-half, she taught her first school.
The county superintendent of schools, H.P. Hall, went to their
little farm for her on June 3, 1876, and told her he had a school for
her at Hogridge; the name sounded Shakespearean to that girl just then.
“I had to wear my short
skirts for a month, until I drew my first salary check, $25.00; then I
bought lots of goods, and as trains were in style, my best dress swept
the floor in a beautiful curving train.
Also my curls disappeared--I bought a jute switch and managed a
fine ‘chignon.’” She
taught at Hogridge three terms, and at Charter Grove, Prairie, and the
Casey school[s].
The summer before she was
eighteen, she went to Michigan, where she taught three years, near South Haven, at Covert and at
Glenn. She then returned to
Illinois
and taught at Hinckley, in the town school, and then was vice-principal
at
DeKalb. She had always dreamed of
coming to
California; and in Aril, 1884, she arrived in Los Angeles. She passed the teacher’s
examination in July, and was fourth best out of forty-three who entered
for certificates, of whom only eight won them.
In September she went to Winters, Yolo county, and taught there
three years—one year at Apricot school, and two as primary teacher in
the town. On April, 19,
1887, she was married to Hamilton Brown Morrison, a native of Stirling
county,
Scotland
, who came to California
when twenty-five years of age. They
had a very beautiful wedding in the Christian Church, the Rev. Philip
Bruton, pastor and friend, performing the ceremony.
As they both had many friends who united in decorating the
church, it was a bower of bloom; and six little girls, her pupils, were
the dainty bridesmaids.
After
the wedding, they came at once to Templeton, where Mr. Morrison was in
business.... They had a little
four-room house, and were trying to “grow up with the country” and
win a fortune. In November,
1892, they moved into their new home just erected on an orchard tract,
and that orchard was a thing of beauty to them.
The time came, in 1900, when it spelled ruin instead, as the
story of Templeton explains. They
had two girls, Mabel Conise, born December 12, 1889, and Marian Cecile,
born May 29, 1892, when they moved to their pretty home.
Marjorie Helen was born there August 17, 1894, and Robert Duane
came early on the morning of July 17, 1896.
Mr.
Morrison had trusted out his work and sold machinery on credit for
thirteen years. The result was inevitable.
The dry year of 1898-99 came, and at least $5,000 worth of
property and outstanding bills were a total loss.
“What was worse, the best thirteen years of life went into the
hole along with all his earnings and mine.
His health broke completely, and it was up to me to be father and
mother both to those helpless little children.
I tackled the job, and my worst enemy would hardly say I made a
bad end of it.” She
earned money writing and reporting for the San Luis Obispo Breeze and
Tribune, collected for these papers, and finally got work reporting for
the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Examiner, Call, and
Chronicle. She wrote for the
Sunday papers, and for Sunset and Overland. Sunset gave her a trip in
1905 to the Portland Exposition, and to Shasta Springs in 1907.
In
August, 1901, she again went to teaching, going into the mountains and
staying there four years at
Alamo
and Huasna. “I
had to watch out for rattlesnakes and mountain lions.
Once when I was belated, only torches made of twisted newspapers
and carried in my hands, while my trembling horse walked with his head
over my right shoulder for two miles through a canyon, saved one or both
of us from a mountain lion that was following us in the brush beside the
road. The lion was shot a
few days later near our cabin. Again,
I had to swim good Nero across the Huasna with a buggy-load of
provisions when the rain was falling in torrents and the stream was a
foam-capped yellow flood; but God takes care of fools and children, so
we landed about a quarter of a mile below the ford.
I think God takes care of mothers, too, when they need it as
badly as I did then.” She
taught straight through for thirteen years.
Meanwhile, she had gotten the three girls ready for teaching, and
her son was in his last year of high school.
They had a little home clear of debt.
It had cost every cent of $3,000.
The children, the three younger ones, proudly paid off the last
$200 in June 1913.
By then she was a physical wreck, ready for the hospital,
and there she went. A great
surgeon—great because he can take a poor wretch all gone to wreck, use
his skill, and turn his patient out almost as good as new—did this
wonder for Mrs. Morrison. Meantime
the school powers had retired her on part retirement salary in June
1914. “A bad sickness extending over three months
in 1916 left me thinking I was on the junk pile, for sure.
In August I was employed by H.A. Preston to write a history of
our county for the Historic Record Company of Los Angeles. I had lived in the county
for thirty years, and had surely lost out, and in a measure won out,
within its borders. I had
driven all over its mountain roads; I knew its beauty and its
possibilities; I knew many of its inhabitants, having taught in the
county over ten years; and I went to work.
I got intensely interested in its wonderful history; I walked and
rode miles and miles; I haunted the courthouse officials for data, and I
think I have written a truthful history.
The work fascinated me, and I have gotten much valuable
information during the time. I
once thought I hated
San Luis Obispo
County, but that was during my hard times.
I want to stay with it now until I get my final summons to
another country.”
***
Already 57 when her history book was published, Annie Morrison
did not receiver her "final summons" until 27 years
later. During those years, she was active in
community affairs, wrote a regular column for the local newspaper, and
published many articles in state and national magazines. The
Telegram-Tribune's obituary on her stated that she would be "long
remembered for her outstanding personality and courage under adversity
and for her loyalty to friends and family." Over 60 years later,
this smart, spunky woman is principally remembered for her contributions
to documenting the county's history, and yet I have not managed to
locate a single photograph of her. If you have knowledge of such a
photo, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.
[Lynne Landwehr / lelandwehr@yahoo.com]
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