Daniel Morgan's GRAVE MATTERS (JP Morgan's wanted to improve it)
Rockefeller financed and ressurected Williamsburg in the 1930s, but J P Morgan's proposal to visit Daniel Morgan grave never went anywhere so to speak.
What year was the proposal to visit made?
1891 or 1904 or both?
1891
Engles writes,
In an undated Baltimore Sun article in the Daniel Morgan Collection at the Handley Archives, financier J. Pierpont Morgan proposed to “visit Winchester in the near future and erect a handsome monument over the grave of his ancestor, General Daniel Morgan. The grave is in [Mount] Hebron Cemetery. Nothing remains of the flat stone which originally covered it but a few scattered fragments, the rest having been carried away.” The monument Morgan proposed to erect is described as “of such magnitude as is worthy of General Morgan’s greatness.”
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Engles theorizes this Baltimore Sun article might have been before August 13, 1891
because of Nemo’s Poem published in the Winchester Star on that date of August 13, 1891.
Engles writes,
Kate McVicar’s nom de plume was Nemo, published a poem in the Winchester Star on this date, decrying the absence of a marker on Morgan’s grave.
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The article’s authors, Engle and her researcher Morris theorize the story on J Pierpont Morgan noted above was near this date because the poem states “a noble generous friend,” might help out. That noble generous friend might be JP Morgan.
1904
A Facebook poster posted an article from the Times-Dispatch stating it was 1904. This article is reproduced below.
Why no Results?
But now we we wonder what stopped JP Morgan's pursuit to make a better monument for Daniel Morgan?
His not pursuing this might be because of the demand high level financial deadlines require. In 1904, the Supreme Court dissolved the Northern Security company; though Morgan did not lose money, his all-powerful political reputation suffered.
But his not following up on this matter could be for other reasons?
Maybe he found out he was not related to Daniel Morgan or simply there was lack of proof.
Or even another reason?
Showing up in Winchester would have meant press and photographs. He did not like publicity. He had severe rosacea.
From Wikipedia:
Morgan often had a tremendous physical effect on people; one man said that a visit from Morgan left him feeling "as if a gale had blown through the house."[4] He was physically large with massive shoulders, piercing eyes, and a purple nose.[67]
He was known to dislike publicity and hated being photographed without his permission; as a result of his self-consciousness of his rosacea, all of his professional portraits were retouched.[68]
His deformed nose was due to a disease called rhinophyma, which can result from rosacea. As the deformity worsens, pits, nodules, fissures, lobulations, and pedunculation contort the nose. This condition inspired the crude taunt "Johnny Morgan's nasal organ has a purple hue."[69]
Surgeons could have shaved away the rhinophymous growth of sebaceous tissue during Morgan's lifetime, but as a child he suffered from infantile seizures, and Morgan's son-in-law, Herbert L. Satterlee, has speculated that he did not seek surgery for his nose because he feared the seizures would return.[70]
His social and professional self-confidence were too well established to be undermined by this affliction. It appeared as if he dared people to meet him squarely and not shrink from the sight, asserting the force of his character over the ugliness of his face.[71]
Compiled and written by Jim Moyer 1/9/2016
updated 2/23/16, 2/6/2017, 2/7/2017, 2/8/2017, 2/28/2017, 4/22/2017, 4/23/2017, (2/23/2019, 2/24/2019 just prologue changed) , 4/29/2019, 7/4/2019, updated 11/29/23, 11/30/2023
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Sources
Winchester Frederick County Historical Society Journal Volume XIV 2002 issue on Daniel Morgan, pages 112 to 130, by Elizabeth Gold Crawford Engle and Mary Thomason Morris (Archivist and Researcher for Clarke Co Historical Assn) for an article entitled: Cannons and Marble: A Monument for Daniel Morgan.
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See Wikipedia on J.P. Morgan :
“John Pierpont “J. P.” Morgan (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation in late 19th and early 20th Century United States.”
Smithsonian Magazine
Source is compliments from Mike Robinson, author of Winchester Tales:
Times Dispatch 1904 article provide by Larry Allen Clowser Webb
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Long-Lost Medal Honoring Revolutionary War Hero Sells for Record-Breaking $960,000
The artifact, which honors General Daniel Morgan, went missing for years—then mysteriously turned up at an auction house specializing in coins and medals
Daily Correspondent
April 14, 2022
A medal honoring a Revolutionary War hero thought to be lost forever sold at auction for a record $960,000 this week. It marked the culmination of 233 years of commemorative chaos, as Bob Montgomery reports for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
Struck at the Philadelphia Mint in 1839, the medal honors General Daniel Morgan, who led Continental troops to victory at the 1781 Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. At the battle, Morgan and his troops decimated their British adversaries, and the victory was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. Morgan’s command is now considered a “tactical masterpiece” by military historians, according to the National Museum of American History, and today, the site of the confrontation is managed by the National Park Service as Cowpens National Battlefield.
Congress first honored Morgan’s valor with a medal designed by French artist Augustin Dupré and struck in Paris in 1789. It was one of 133 medals created as part of the Comitia Americana series, which recognized key moments of the Revolutionary War.
As Paul Gilkes writes for Coin World, the Cowpens medal’s design is considered to be “the most awe-inspiring” of the series. One side depicts Morgan charging into battle on horseback, while the other shows a Native American woman placing a crown of laurels on his head.
When Morgan died in 1802, his grandson inherited his medal. Secure in a Pittsburgh bank vault, it seemed safe. In 1818, though, thieves stole the medal and it was never found.
The saga, it turned out, had only just begun. Congress agreed to strike a replacement medal and presented it to Morgan’s great-grandson in 1841. Financier J.P. Morgan, who mistakenly believed he was related to General Morgan, acquired the medal around 1885. After that, experts believed the replacement medal was lost or melted down.
In recent months, though, after going missing for more than a century, the replacement medal mysteriously resurfaced when an anonymous individual consigned it to Stack’s Bowers, an auction house that specializes in coins, currency, tokens and medals. It arrived in its original red leather U.S. Mint case, nestled inside a purple crushed velvet interior.
“My reaction was somewhere along the lines of, holy (expletive),” John Kraljevich, an expert hired to evaluate the medal, told the Herald-Journal in March. “As soon as I laid my eyes on it, I knew what it was.”
In early April, the medal found its next owner at a Stack’s Bowers auction. Bidding started at $300,000 and escalated by $20,000, then $50,000, increments. After roughly six minutes of bidding, the medal—which was expected to garner between $200,000 and $500,000—sold for $800,000.
The sale may have ended the medal’s mysterious journeys for good, but it became even more notorious with its sale. Its $960,000 price, which includes a 20 percent buyer’s fee, set a world record for an American historical medal.
The Cowpens medal’s buyer remains anonymous. As Stack’s Bowers executive vice president Chris Karstedt tells the Herald-Journal, though, the medal has “gone to a good home.”
According to Coin World, the last similar medal to be sold at auction was General Anthony Wayne’s medal for the Battle of Stony Point, which sold for a record $51,000 in 1978—the equivalent of about $225,000 in 2022 dollars.
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