Morgan, Richard Price, 1790-1882

The Morgans were a Welsh family, whose members emigrated to America in the late 18th century.

Welsh dissenting minister and scientist George Cadogan Morgan was born in 1754 in Brigend in the county of Glamorgan. Morgan left Oxford after a year to attend the dissenting Hoxton Academy, and then preached in Norwich and Hackney. Sympathizing with the American Revolutionary War, he also was a supporter of the French Revolution. In July of 1789, while accompanying three friends on a Continental tour, Morgan arrived in Paris in time for the fall of the Bastille, and traveled through the country. Also a scientist of some fame, Morgan died in 1798 after inhaling fumes while conducting a chemical experiment. George Cadogan Morgan's son, Richard Price Morgan (1780-1882) emigrated to America in 1798 with his mother and several siblings, and they settled on a farm adjacent to farm of his brother George C. Morgan in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Around 1814, Richard P. Morgan ventured west in search of better fortune. Over the next six decades Morgan pursued many trading ventures and by the 1820s found work in the growing railroad industry. He worked as a surveyor and civil engineer on many lines in New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois through the 1870s and also maintained a farm in Kendall County, Illinois. Richard Price Morgan's son, George C. Morgan, joined his father on the railroad. He helped construct the Eastern Extension and Michigan Central roads, and in 1868 worked on the first iron bridge in Chicago, the 18th Street Bridge. He continued to work in railroad construction and surveying until illness forced his retirement around 1900. Born in 1816 in Massachusetts, Henry A. Gardner was Richard P. Morgan's business partner, and he married Morgan's daughter, Sarah. Also a civil engineer, he worked on the Hudson River Railroad and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and died in 1852. Sarah and Henry Gardner's son, Henry A. Gardner, born in 1845, was a Chicago lawyer who often represented railroad companies. He died in 1911.