Person:Elizabeth Moran (7)

Info from her obit of Friday, June 28, 1946, unnamed newspaper, says that "When she was five years of age, she went to live with a grandmother at Galesburg, Ill., because her father, John J. Morrain, was killed in action in the Civil War and her mother, Julietta Morrain, died soon after." Also, it says that "Mrs. Jones was a cousin of Martin Johnson, who with his wife, Osa, traveled in Africa on serveral different expeditions in the employ of the American Museum of Natural History filming wild life and doing scientific research."

The connection to Martin Johnson was finally made by researcher John Manning Stewart of Grand Island, NE. Elizabeth's mother, Juliette, had a sister Celia Belle Martin who married John Alfred Johnson and had a son, Martin Elmer Johnson who was famous as an explorer beginning in 1912 by going to the South Seas. He was an early photographer of natives and animals in the Solomons, New Hebrides and Borneo. He and his wife Osa also made many trips to Africa. They went to East Africa in 1937 to head an expedition making the film "Stanley and Livingston". They wrote many books including several that became movies, including "Cannibal Land", "Lion", "Camera Trails in Africa", "Safari - A sage of the African Blue:, "Over African Jungles, and "Congorilla". They began flying in 1932 and flew thousands of miles to remote locations for their photographs. These enabled them to have a lucrative lecture program when they returned home from their trips. Ironically, Martin did not die on one of the dangerous, remote trips, but in a commercial airplane crash in California in 1937. Osa carried on with the business until her death in 1953.

Other names: The last name has been spelled various ways including Murrain, Morrain and Merrain. She may have simplified it to Moran.

1. ↑ IL Statewide Marriage Index 1763-1900.
2. ↑ Gravestone Inscriptions of the Elemwood Cem, Fruita, Mesa, CO.