Thomas Morgan

Thomas Morgan is the patron saint of our Morgan Family in America. He was a diamond in the rough, whose true value was revealed by future generations of his family as they proved their worth when measured against the grinding challenges of frontier America

On this page we present three portraits of Thomas Morgan and links to (1) a comprehensive, well researched and documented history of Thomas Morgan and his families with his wives Ann Ollen Watkins and Nancy Jane Radford, and (2) a research paper that examines the origins of Thomas and Ann Morgan in England.

A History Of Thomas Morgan And His Families

This exquisite old 16 inch by 20 inch portrait of Thomas Morgan was recently discovered in a children's toy closet. Mounted on canvas and a small wood border frame, it appeared to have been enclosed in an ornate outer frame at one time. It was torn and badly damaged. It was flown to New York City (Arriving just in time for the September 11 World Trade Center Attack, which it survived, fortunately) where it was scanned into computers and restored. What you are seeing here is a restored version of perhaps the most important picture in our Morgan Family Heritage: A large portrait of the man who brought the Morgan Family to America.

Name explanation: In many early Morgan Family group sheets Thomas is listed as Thomas William Morgan. However, recent research has not been able to verify that he was ever named William, so we have dropped William from his name. Those of you who have family group sheets using the name William will want to read our research paper titled "Thomas and Ann Morgan in England," which is an examination of Thomas Morgan's origins in Herefordshire. There is a link to this research paper on this page.

Here is the story of how we happen to have this wonderful old portrait of Thomas Morgan

This portrait is 16 inches by 20 inches in size. It is paper glued to canvas and the canvas is mounted on a wood frame. It appears to have been originally mounted in a larger, decorative, frame which has been lost.

Above is the restored portrait.

As you can see from the top photograph, the original portrait is badly damaged and pieces of it are missing. The first step in restoring it was to have one of the best photography studios in New York City make a digital negative of it and burn the digital image onto a CD.

Then I put the CD in one of my powerful Macintosh Graphics Workstations, copied the digital image onto my hard drive, opened it in Photoshop, and began to rebuild it. Photoshop is a graphics program that allows the user to change the digital pixels that the photograph is made of.

First I removed the cracks and tears by moving good colors and textures over the damaged areas. Then I filled in the missing parts the same way. And then I lightened and smoothed the background. The final step was to adjust the colors. And then the digital restoration was burned to another CD.

This is a picture of the old Thomas Morgan portrait as it was when it was found in Idaho in the summer of 2001. This priceless and irreplaceable old portrait was very nearly lost but enough of it survived so that it could be restored.

I brought it to home to Manhattan with me in September, 2001, so I could restore it. I was making jokes about Thomas Morgan visiting the big city when I arrived and three days later the terrorist attacks occurred on the World Trade Center Buildings about a mile or so down the street from me. Fortunately, Thomas not only survived the ravages of time, but also survived the September 11 attacks!