Wetzel County, West Virginia    Biography of Thomas Lee MORGAN

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Submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook@earthlink.net>, March 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., 
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 51

THOMAS LEE MORGAN is the druggist at Pine Grove, a suc-
cessful young business man, of well balanced initiative, and
his work and interests are closely linked with the general wel-
fare of his community.

Mr. Morgan was born at Pine Grove September 21, 1886.
He comes of a branch of the Morgan family that on leaving
Wales settled in Pennsylvania in Colonial times. This branch
of the Morgan name included the noted Indian fighter Levi
Morgan, and of the same ancestry was General John Morgan
of the Confederate Army. The grandfather of the Pine
Grove merchant was John William Morgan, who was born on
Morgan Run in Wetzel County in 1820, that Run being named
for his father. John W. Morgan was a farmer there, but in
middle life removed to Pine Grove and owned and operated a
flour and saw mill. He died there in 1896. His wife was Miss
T. Petrick, who was born near Shinnston and died at Pine
Grove. Frank Ferdinand Morgan, father of Thomas L.
Morgan, was born September 8,1848, at the head of the North
Fork of Fishing Creek, on Morgan Run in Wetzel County,
grew up there, but as a young man removed to Pine Grove,
where he married and where for many years he has engaged
in farming. He still owns his place of four hundred acres in
that vicinity. For several terms he was county surveyor of
Wetzel County, and now does considerable business as a civil
engineer for oil and gas companies in the Wetzel County
fields. He has served a number of terms as councilman and
mayor of Pine Grove, and for many years has been on the
Official Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is a
democrat, is affiliated with Wetzel Lodge No. 39, A. F. and
A. M., and is a fourteenth degree Scottish Rite Mason in
West Virginia Consistory No. 1 at Wheeling. His wife bore
the maiden name of Martha Virginia West and was born on a
farm near Pine Grove, September 23, 1861. To their mar-
riage were born eight children: Cordelia, wife of Sam J.
Dulaney, proprietor of a livery business at Pine Grove and
former mayor of that city; Pearl, wife of Paul D. Galvin, an
oil well driller and contractor living at Pine Grove; Vashti,
wife of Ralph W. Hall, a druggist at Paden City, West Vir-
ginia; Thomas L.; Don Franklin, who was a druggist and died
of influenza in 1918, at the age of twenty-eight; Liss, wife of
Morris Francis, a clothing merchant at New Martinsville;
Georgia, wife of Earl Clancy, a general merchant at Smith-
field in Wetzel County; and Gladys, wife of Lesley Jolliff, a
machinist at Pine Grove.

Thomas L. Morgan grew up at Pine Grove, graduated from
high school in 1906, spent one year in the School of Pharmacy
at Scio, Ohio, and in 1908 graduated Ph. G. from the Western
University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh. While in college he
was a member of the Phi Delta Chi fraternity. After grad-
uating he spent one year in a drug store at Charleston, West
Virginia, and then returned to Pine Grove and bought the
business of his brother-in-law, R. W. Hall. He owns both the
store and the building, and has developed the best drug busi-
ness in the western part of Wetzel County. Among other
business interests he is treasurer of the Sago Oil Company of
Ohio and Secretary-treasurer of the Superior Red Ash Fuel
Company of Bluefield, West Virginia.

Mr. Morgan is a member of the City Council of Pine
Grove, is treasurer of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is a
democrat, and is affiliated with Wetzel Lodge No. 39, A. F.
and A. M., has attained the thirty-second degree in West
Virginia Consistory No. 1, and is a member of Osiris Temple
of the Mystic Shrine at Wheeling. He is also a past chancellor
of Sylvan Lodge No. 130, Knights of Pythias, and is a member
of the West Virginia Druggists Association.

In 1916, at Wheeling, he married Miss Eloise Williams,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Evan A. Williams, residents of
Middlebourne, where her father is a dairy farmer. Mrs.
Morgan is a graduate of Marshall College at Huntington
with the A. B. degree. They have two children: Virginia
Lee, and Franklin Evan.