Saturday, May 26, 2007

Today is John Wayne's 100th Birthday

John Wayne, the famous Academy Award winning movie actor, would have been 100 years old today. He was born as Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa on 26 May 1907 to Clyde and Mary (Brown) Morrison. An extensive biography is provided at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_wayne.

John Wayne's researched ancestry is at http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/john-wayne/index.html. You can click on "See my Tree" link under his picture to see what somebody has found about his ancestry. I was surprised that they didn't have more down his Buck line, since there are several more generations readily available in databases and on web pages. There are also quite a few GEDCOM's in the Rootsweb WorldConnect database, but most are as poor as the one above.

I know that Michael John Neill had some of the census records for Marion/John on his www.rootdig.com census pages, but they aren't there any longer due to Ancestry's "request."

I easily found the Clyde Morrison family in the 1910 census in Madison township, Madison County, Iowa with 2 year old Marion R. Morrison (NARA T624, Roll 412, ED 31, Page 2A).

In the 1920 census, the Clyde Morrison family was in Glendale, Los Angeles County, California with 12 year old Marion M. Morrison (NARA T625, Roll 102, ED 26, page 1A).

In the 1930 census, the Clyde Morrison family does not include Marion/John - but they live in Long Beach, Los Angeles county, California (NARA T626, Roll 129, ED 1125, page 3A).

I looked for him as Marion Morrison, Michael Morrison and John Wayne in the 1930 census in all of California, but did not find him. Was he not enumerated? He had just started his acting career. Perhaps someone else can.

Marion Morrison was an 8th cousin to me through the colonial Knowlton family of Ipswich MA and the colonial Wheeler family of Concord MA. My colonial Buck line is in the Cambridge MA area while his is in Connecticut.

"John Wayne" was interred at Pacific View Memorial Park in corona Del Mar (Orange county) CA after his death on 11 June 1979. His gravestone includes this quotation: "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

Anyway - happy 100th birthday to the Duke!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am a very distant cousin of Marion Morrison myself. My grandfather is Robert Morrison of New Providence, PA. I have about 6-7 generations before him. My mother has our family tree that I did when I was in high school about 15 years ago. You can email me @ Amanda17368@aol.com

Anonymous said...

Haha were sorta related i guess!
but I'm closer to him than you guys i think, I'm not very good with the whole 1, 2, 3 cousin thing. But anyway, I'll see if I can beak it down....My grandmother on my father's side, was John's dad's sister. a.k.a. his aunt.
so yeah his father is my great-uncle.
haha I know that was confusing.

Anonymous said...

My great great great grandfather was robert E morrison

jennifer in ohio said...

I am related to Marion. I am sitting with his niece Cathryn Morrison (Parrott) right now at a nursing home. Family please contact me. Jenniferinohio@gmail.com.
She is lucid right now speaking about Marion her Uncle.