Starting the process of spinning a yarn about my Great Grand Father

Shortly after my mother's 80th birthday, we decided it was time to sit down and document all the stories she had collected over the years about her grandfather, Captain Thomas Jefferson Morrison. He was just a month from turning 70 years old when my grandmother was born. Captain Morrison would live until 1 month of turning 94 years old.

Over the years, this gentle soul would share stories of Indians, Civil War, Mercantile, and Politics. My grandmother, Patience Elizabeth Coltrane Morrison was 36 years his junior. She lived until 82 years old, all the while caring for my mother Maryn "Jeff "Haley Bratton and her two sisters. My mother, Jeff was named after her grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Morrison (TJM). Jeff always had an interest in the stories her mother and grandmother would pass along about TJM.

Over the years, my mother and I would travel to Walnut Springs Texas where TJM settled after the war and raised his only living child. TJM owned several stores in town and help start churches, schools and various other businesses. We were lucky enough to meet a couple locales that remembered him in his later years and they too shared their stories.

We have his diary from the Civil War, carriage lap blanket, reading glasses, charcoal drawing of him, and family history inked for posterity. My mother had more items of his, but unfortunately, my grandmother Kate Morrison Haley married Mr. John Williams shortly before her death in San Antonio, Texas, and he kept them. Our family would never see these items again.

We now are putting everything we have gathered down on paper and plan to work up an outline soon. We are interested in telling his story, based on the information we have and what we hope to gather. It is important when telling his story, to also tell what else is going on in the country. It is almost unbelievable when you consider it was not long ago we had states at war with each other and family members on both sides of the conflict due to physical location and/or personal beliefs.

The task is daunting. We have so much information. We continue to travel in his footsteps across the states of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas.