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Post by fred on Mar 9, 2016 17:09:19 GMT -6
I have come across another of those very obscure footnotes... you know: the ones nobody ever reads... the ones making no sense, so we skip over them? The ones that drive one to distraction....
So... I come to my reference library: you guys.
In my never-ending quest to place people where they belong, does anyone here know of any first-hand, primary accounts mentioning the presence of PVT William Ephraim Morris-- "a private of worthless character"-- in the valley fight? Other than a 49-year hence comment by William Slaper that is....
I am talking about accounts by someone other than Morris detailing Morris in the fighting.
Thanks.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by dave on Mar 9, 2016 20:24:43 GMT -6
Fred Haven't a clue. Good to see you back. Regards Dave
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Gerry
Junior Member
Peter
Posts: 63
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Post by Gerry on Mar 10, 2016 6:22:36 GMT -6
John Ryan wrote, "I was ordered by Capt. French of my company to take ten men and deploy them as a skirmish line to cover the underbrush and timber on the way down, as some Indians might be lurking there. I have never seen anything in print about that, but I am the man that deployed the skirmishers, and had charge of them and I think Wm. E. Morris, whom you have mentioned, was one of my skirmishers."
Ref: letter Ryan to Camp Nov. 29, 1908 On The Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, Hardorff. page 17
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Post by fred on Mar 10, 2016 8:39:54 GMT -6
On The Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, Hardorff. page 17 Thank you. Does it seem suspicious to you? The fact Ryan was responding to a letter written to him by Walter Camp, and prompted by a Morris letter to Camp? Ryan's letter was dated November 29, 1908; Camp queried him some time earlier that month, prompted by Morris' letter to Camp, dated November 1, 1908, only twenty-eight days earlier. The Ryan response-- and Morris letter-- came thirty-two years after the battle. Would it be reasonable for Morris to claim such a presence, hoping Ryan's memory had dulled by that time? Would you-- or anyone for that matter-- clearly remember the ten guys you sent on a skirmish? Interesting... Best wishes, Fred.
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Gerry
Junior Member
Peter
Posts: 63
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Post by Gerry on Mar 10, 2016 9:50:05 GMT -6
John Ryan wrote, "I was ordered by Capt. French of my company to take ten men and deploy them as a skirmish line to cover the underbrush and timber on the way down, as some Indians might be lurking there. I have never seen anything in print about that, but I am the man that deployed the skirmishers, and had charge of them and I think Wm. E. Morris, whom you have mentioned, was one of my skirmishers." Ref: letter Ryan to Camp Nov. 29, 1908 On The Little Bighorn with Walter Camp, Hardorff. page 17 Referencing Ryan's letter of 1908: Ryan states that the ten men deployed as skirmishers that he, Ryan, was in charge and that he had never seen anything in print about that. Morris in a letter of September 21, 1904 to Cyrus Brady wrote, "He (Reno) directed French to send ten men from the right of his troop to skirmish the woods, before the "number four" proceeded there with the horses." Morris's letter was four years before Ryan stated he had never seen anything in print about that.
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Post by fred on Mar 10, 2016 14:10:08 GMT -6
Brady's book was published in 1909, after the letters by both Morris and Ryan. The Ryan letter was dated November 19, 1908, and was in response to a letter he received from Camp that same month. Camp's letter was prompted by Morris' letter of November 1.
Morris' letter prompted the Camp correspondence with Ryan, and the mentioning of Morris' name, along with the hint that, "Yes, I was part of that!"
I don't know about you, but I do not remember the names of 10 people I worked with 32 years ago or even the names of 10 men in my company in Vietnam who I may have sent on a convoy. Yet Ryan, 32 years hence, is supposed to recall the names of all ten men he may have sent along the river as skirmishers?
Again, I am not questioning a single word of Morris' accounts of what went on in the valley: he may have been citing, very accurately, the words of others. What I am questioning is Morris' participation in the whole affair. Is Morris another Kanipe? Another Goldin?
Best wishes, Fred.
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willy
New Member
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Post by willy on Mar 10, 2016 15:52:23 GMT -6
Morris may not have been in the valley fight, but with the pack train. His letter to Walter Camp 24 Dec 1909 was accompanied by a newspaper clipping of his letter 11 Mar. 1892, to the editor of "The Record", in which Morris told of his being with the Old Guard leading a mule during the night march 24-25 June. This is cited in Military Register of Custer's Last Command, p. 231, n. 52.
Willy
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Post by fred on Mar 10, 2016 19:55:35 GMT -6
Morris may not have been in the valley fight, but with the pack train. His letter to Walter Camp 24 Dec 1909 was accompanied by a newspaper clipping of his letter 11 Mar. 1892, to the editor of "The Record", in which Morris told of his being with the Old Guard leading a mule during the night march 24-25 June. This is cited in Military Register of Custer's Last Command, p. 231, n. 52. Willy, Exactly!!! And that is what I am trying to prove or disprove. So were his "Old Guard" buddies re-assigned just before they crossed the divide... or not? I have two other names of M Company men who could have very well been with the packs, so.... Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by fred on Mar 10, 2016 20:01:16 GMT -6
When does a "primary" source fade from being one with the passage of that elusive quantity,...time? Memory is a frangible thing, especially after the passage of decades. These questions are not meant to be rhetorical, but I will understand if you are diplomatically quiet. Robb, Oh, no, you are perfectly within your rights to ask that question. It is something I have been shouting about for years. The greater passage of time, the less stock I put in the reminiscence. Martini is a perfect example. And it is why I am questioning Ryan's comments, especially when he couches them with the phrase, "I think he was there" (an obvious paraphrase). Goldin was not the only charlatan associated with this event and Morris' record does not speak well of him.... The key may lie in some of the correspondence. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by tubman13 on Mar 11, 2016 5:37:23 GMT -6
Fred, Did not this guy become a lawyer and later a judge in NY? Who knows he may have opened the William Morris, Talent Agency in 1898, also in NY. Not so, that agency was, in fact, opened in 1898, by Zelman Moses who changed the name to William Morris. That was today's attempt at trivia.
Regards, Tom
PS that was my inner HR sneaking out!
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Post by AZ Ranger on Mar 11, 2016 7:28:44 GMT -6
When does a "primary" source fade from being one with the passage of that elusive quantity,...time? Memory is a frangible thing, especially after the passage of decades. These questions are not meant to be rhetorical, but I will understand if you are diplomatically quiet. Robb, Oh, no, you are perfectly within your rights to ask that question. It is something I have been shouting about for years. The greater passage of time, the less stock I put in the reminiscence. Martini is a perfect example. And it is why I am questioning Ryan's comments, especially when he couches them with the phrase, "I think he was there" (an obvious paraphrase). Goldin was not the only charlatan associated with this event and Morris' record does not speak well of him.... The key may lie in some of the correspondence. Best wishes, Fred. That was DC's point of using the Reno Court of Inquiry as a cut off date. That would eliminate a lot of accounts where time from an event or outside influence is a concern. As far as recollections. I am sure my recollections of certain events are clear even 47 years after being in Vietnam. As far as remembering names I can remember those close to me that did or did not make it home. Regards Steve
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Post by fred on Mar 11, 2016 8:07:02 GMT -6
The Morris thing is very interesting.
Morris was something of a liar and a punk, it seems. No one knows when he was born, and that includes all the books that give a DOB. Back in 2007, on these boards, I received a note from a woman whose name was Barbara Morris. We e-mailed one another and she claimed to be a descendant and the family was trying to figure out when this guy was born: a lot of haziness in his background. She lived in Texas, but Morris is buried here in New York, not far from where I live. I told her I would go there, take a picture of his marker, and check the cemetery records. Morris, after all, was a city judge in the Bronx, a borough of New York City.
Well...! The cemetery had no record of his DOB and there was none on his headstone. I e-mailed Barbara, but never got a response, leading me to believe she had died in the interim.
Then, of course, there is Morris' record in the military, which is less than marvelous, him being discharged in 1879, I think it was, as a "private of worthless character." Very nice!!
Authors have called him a liar; they have doubted his accounts; and all the rest. My problem is that I have found everything Morris has left us-- and there are one or two exceptions to all that-- extremely reasonable and eminently believable. I use it in Strategy... a lot. Even though much of Morris' tale is related many years after the battle, the generalities ring true. It is the specifics I tend to push aside, because-- as AZ says and as I have found to be true in my own experiences-- we tend to lose memory of those specifics as time goes by. And by way of example, the Miles O'Harra incident is one specific; the horses-in-the-timber business is another. The O'Harra thing is incidental, but the horses thing is not, for it dictates much of what befell M Company. Still, there is enough evidence to the contrary to prove Morris' 1904 and 1928 recollections invalid. Plus, one can see, because of the circumstances, how Morris could have been mistaken in general terms.
As I have gone over his various accounts, I have found them to be well-written (unless authors have tinkered with them... which I tend to doubt) and very consistent, which is extremely important: if you make up stories 25 years after the fact, forgetting various facts, you are certain to forget more facts and parts of those "make-ups" 24 years after that.
What threw me with Morris was exactly as "Willy" posted here. We do not know the names of all the men assigned to the pack train, but we can make some reasonably educated guesses. There are too many accounts telling us the numbers were six men plus an NCO from each company (I guess B Company was exempt), though even there, we have some discrepancies. The fact of the matter is several companies had more men with the train, but they were performing other duties, such as taking care of the officers' other horses. The business about Morris' "Old Guard" buddies and the hitching of a mule to his foot made me perk up and think maybe he was one of those six. On the other hand, the assignments were made later that morning. So far, I have identified three other M Company men who were likely candidates for the pack assignment, one of them a sergeant... and that fits quite well, because he is not mentioned by anyone in the valley fight, and all the other NCOs were. Score one for "fred." The second and third names I have are somewhat more problematic... he was part of that "Old Guard"; then that brings me back to Morris.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Mar 11, 2016 8:18:12 GMT -6
I think Morris was kicked out for fighting.
Chesty Puller
"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the real Marines."
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Post by Diane Merkel on Mar 11, 2016 9:54:13 GMT -6
Morris has bothered me ever since Barbara (the one Fred referenced above) first wrote to me about him. At the time, my instinct was to think the guy at LBH and the judge were not the same person; too many things didn't fit. The original thread was started almost a dozen years ago and can be read here: lbha.proboards.com/thread/1202/william-ephraim-morrisIt was resurrected later at lbha.proboards.com/thread/1360/william-ephraim-morrisI still think the judge was a fraud, a guy who happened to share the same name as a guy at LBH. Diane
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Post by fred on Mar 11, 2016 11:00:37 GMT -6
I think Morris was kicked out for fighting. Yep. He was. Now check out this headstone... no date-of-birth. When have you ever seen that?, especially with a reasonably modern stone. Was he trying to cover up lies that preceded him? Whoops!!! Can no longer post pictures... the forum has exceeded it limit. Oh, well! Best wishes, Fred.
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