San Francisco County
THOMAS WOLFE MORGAN
Thomas Wolfe Morgan, City Engineer of Oakland, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, December 3, 1839, the only son of Judge Thomas Nicholson Morgan and Mary De Neale (Wolfe) Morgan. The father was born in that State in 1809, a son of George J. Morgan and his wife, who was a daughter of Judge John Nicholson. The parents had come to Louisiana from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of which State they are thought to have been natives. T. N. Morgan was a gold-medal graduate of Yale College in the class of 1831, and ascended the bench as Associate Justice of the city of New Orleans at the age of twenty four, retraining that position until his early death, in his thirty-fifth year, in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1844. Judge Morgan took an active and leading part in reform work, was scrupulously strict with himself and of unbounded charity toward others. The mother, born in Winchester, Virginia, May 17, 1817, a daughter of Dr. Thomas Wolfe, a native of that city, and his wife, Mary Ann (Patten) Wolfe. Left an orphan in her ninth year, she was adopted by an aunt who was the wife of Rev. Dr. Wheat, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a professor in the university of that State. She was married to Judge Morgan in 1837, T. W. Morgan being the only living issue of that marriage. She was again married in Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 1850, to J. B. Harmon, now an attorney of San Francisco, residing in Berkeley. Mr. and Mrs. Harmon moved to Warren, Ohio, in 1852, and to California in 1854. Mrs. Harmon’s mother, born April 5, 1795, married May 14, 1816, died December 25, 1825; her grandmother, Mary (Roberdeau) Patten, born in Philadelphia, May 6, 1774, removed with her parents to Alexandria, Virginia, where she was married November 14, 1783, to Thomas Patten, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, July 22, 1769, a son of Thomas and Anna Patten. He was a merchant in Alexandria. The elder Thomas Patten, born April 4, 1734, died January 31, 1805; Anna, his wife, born September 25, 1742, died January 5, 1800.
T. W. Morgan, the subject of this sketch, received his early education in New Orleans and in Warren, Ohio, and his finishing course under his mother’s adopted father, Rev. Dr. Wheat, at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from about the age of fifteen to eighteen. He came to this coast by the Panama routte. arriving in December, 1857. Here he engaged as assistant to James Terrell, United States Deputy Surveyor, then occupied in Monterey county, remaining with him four months. He had learned something of that science in the University of North Carolina, and now continued his studies, being somewhat undecided whether to embrace architecture or engineering as a career. In 1861 he decided in favor of the latter, under Robert L. Harris, the first work being the survey of the first horse railroad in San Francisco. Remaining with Mr. Harris some four years, he was engaged in different jobs, such as the Ophir railroad in Virginia city, which was abandoned as a railroad enterprise, but the survey was utilized for a wagon road. He did the instrumental work on the Point San Jose survey, and at Black Point Fort about 1863, and was transit man on Harris’ work for the Central Pacific railroad in 1864 and 1865. He next surveyed under George C. Potter, City and County Surveyor of San Francisco, acting chiefly as leveler and computer, and afterward as chief draughtsman to Assessor Wheaton for two years. In 1868, in partnership with another pupil of Robert L. Harris, he formed the firm of Morgan & Smith, civil engineers and surveyors. He had charge of the land party in the survey of the Oakland waterfront. In 1870, he was chief engineer of the first horse railroad in Sacramento. In 1871 he surveyed the town of Calistoga, making a map thereof, which is still recognized as standard. In 1872, he came to work as deputy to T. J. Arnold, city engineer, and made a map of the Northern Addition to Oakland. In 1873 he was put in charge of the office as chief deputy, so remaining until Mr. Arnold’s death in 1878. He was then appointed City Engineer by the City Council, holding the same by their reappointment until the new charter took effect in April, 1889. He is now his own successor, under the new regime, by appointment by the Board of Public Works. Some few years ago he made the preliminary survey of the Cliff House steam railroad, and also laid off the grounds on Sutro Heights for the proprietor, but his work of late years has been chiefly confined to the discharge of his official duties. He is a member of the Technical Society of the Pacific coast; also of the California Society of Civil Engineers.
Mr. Morgan was married in Santa Cruz, December 25, 1865, to Miss Christiana Agnes Ross, born in Oxford, Ontario, October 16, 1847, a daughter of Daniel and Janet (Macneille) Ross, born, reared and married in Scotland, whence they emigrated to Canada about 1843, with five sons and one daughter. A son and two daughters were born to them in Canada, whence they came to California, in March 1856. They were the parents of thirteen children, of whom three sons and two daughters are living; Daniel Ross, of Santa Cruz, born in 1827; Joseph, of Monterey; Frank, of Selma, Jennie, by marriage Mrs. W. A. Sanborn, of Watsonville; and Christina A., the wife of T. W. Morgan, the subject of this sketch. Another brother of Mrs. Morgan, John Balfour Kirkwood Ross, died in Selma, Fresno county, May 9, 1890, of acute pneumonia, at the age of forty-six. The father, Daniel Ross, born, May 13, 1802, died in Watsonville, February 18, 1870, and was buried in Watsonville; the mother, Janet Macneille, of the Macneilles of Ayr, Scotland, born October 3, 1805, died in Oakland, December 4, 1889, and was buried with her husband in Watsonville. The children of Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Morgan are: Ross Morgan, born January 5, 1867, is a graduate of the University of California of the class of 1891, preparing for the profession of civil engineer, having taken an interest in his father’s work since the age of eleven years; Miss De Neale Morgan, born May 24, 1868, a student of the School of Design in San Francisco, is a young lady of marked talent; Janet H. Morgan, born April 22, 1870, died November 29, 1877; Thomas W., Jr., born August 22, 1875; Dana Roberdeau, born February 3, 1879; James Wheat, born January 17, 1881, and Jennie Christine, born March 18, 1884, complete the list of seven children.
Transcribed
by David Rugeroni.
Source: "The
Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2, Page 216- 217, Lewis
Publishing Co, 1892.
©
2005 David Rugeroni.