... Sometime in 1884, he was married to Mrs. Priscilla Douglas, whose maiden name was Bryan. She is said to be a niece of Mrs. Daniel Boone. Her husband, William Douglas, was killed by the Indians. August 15th, 1782, in a cornfield adjoining Bryan's Station, in attempting to enter the Fort with the reinforcements from Boone's Station.
The newly married couple made their home for the next seven or eight years at Boone's and Holder's Stations, he following his vocation of surveying, locating large tracts of land on the percentage or contract basis, usually getting one-half. In this way, he acquired large tracts of land in Montgomery, Bath and adjoining counties. Six or seven Kentucky histories contain accounts of Surveyor Morgan, of Boonesborough, while Collins refers to S. Morgan as being employed by Simon Kenton to locate some large warrants for him in March, 1786, and of his applying to Kenton for supplies for his crew and receiving the laconic reply, that he had no supplies for him, and that he would give him a sound flogging the first time he saw him. We have no data as to whether he kept his promise or not. The last mention of Ralph Morgan in history is an account of his appearance as a witness in a land contest in 1804, involving the title to the land on the present site of the city of Lexington, Kentucky.
Ralph Morgan had four children as far as the writer can ascertain : Abel, Rolla, Sarah and Priscilla.
Priscilla and Sarah married brothers — John and William McCullouoh, and from these have sprung large numbers of descendants of this name, a number of whom reside in the vicinity of West Port, Indiana.
In the summer of 1792, two forts or stockades were built on Slate Creek, named Morgan's and Gilmore's Stations respectively, and were occupied and corn raised in what is now Montgomery county, Kentucky, but owing to prowling bands of Indians and the remoteness to other forts, three men being killed, they were abandoned in September of the same year, the settlers returning to Boone's and Bryan's Stations.
In February, 1793, six families, in all twenty-seven persons, again occupied Morgan's Station ; Ralph Morgan's family being one. During the last days of March, Ralph Morgan and wife took four pack-horses and went to Boonesborough to get their household goods, leaving their two oldest children, David Douglas and Abel Morgan, at the fort. On April 1st, Easter Monday, say the Historians, at 10 a. m., 1793, the men all being out looking after the planting of their crops, no man about the fort except one, and he old and infirm, the gates wide open, thirty-five Indians rushed in and captured the fort, killing the old man above named, and one woman who was unable to travel, and carried off the remainder, nineteen persons, as prisoners, after setting fire to the fort. David Douglas and his half-brother, Abel Morgan, the former twelve years of age and the latter less than eight, at the time the rush was made on the fort, were playing in Slate Creek, and on hearing the yells of the Indians and the screams of women and children, at once fled for their lives pursued by four Indians. The boys knew of a large standing sycamore tree, hollow at the bottom, which they ran to and quickly entered, and there hid, standing on rotten portions of the tree until their pursuers had passed and repassed to their party, when they came out and made their way to Boonesborough and rejoined their parents. On the alarm being given, pursuit was made, which the Indians discovered, and massacred such of their prisoners as were unable to keep up in their rapid retreat. The pursuit was abandoned, but the captives were restored after Wayne's Treaty two years later.
The two brothers lie buried side by side in a country graveyard, not more than eight feet apart, about five miles west of Greensburg, Decatur county, Indiana. The writer visited their graves in February, 1909, and copied the following inscriptions from their headstones:
"David Douglas, Born Nov. 9, 1781. Died Jan. 23, 1861."
"Abel Morgan, Born March 14, 1786. Died July 16, 1863."
In 1796, at the close of Indian hostilities, Ralph Morgan rebuilt the block house and stockade, and in addition, a. large stone house inside the stockade, in which he lived until the time of his death. The exact time of his death is not known, but was about 1809. He and his wife are buried in a graveyard near his old fort. I am informed by George M. Ewing, of Greensburg, Indiana, one of his descendants, that the old stone house is occupied and still standing where it was built by Ralph Morgan in 1796. ...
