The following was taken from an obituary in the 10 April 1942 issue of the Kingman Journal,
Kingman, KS. It appears the Journal no longer exists.
Although only ten children are listed at the end of the obituary, the body of the obituary mentions that Harvey and Martha
Ellen had 12 children. I do not know if the excluded children died in infancy or adulthood.
"Mrs. Harvey Morris Passes Away Friday
Pioneer Mother, Resident Here 60 Years, Buried Sunday Afternoon
Mrs. Martha Ellen Morris, one of the beloved mothers of this community for almost sixty years, died at 10
o'clock Friday morning, April 3, at her home on Avenue A east, after an illness of about nine weeks.
Funeral services were held at the Baptist church at 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon, with the pastor, Rev. F. B. Dodson,
officiating. Burial was in the Cleveland cemetery. The Livingston mortuary was in charge.
A daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Yoakum, Mrs. Morris was born in Browning, Mo., June 2, 1866. She grew to
womanhood there and was married there to Harvey Morris Jun 14, 1882, and would soon have reached their sixtieth wedding anniversary.
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The day after their marriage they started on a 500-mile trip in a covered wagon for Kingman county, where Mr.
Morris had lived for four years. Their first home was in a dugout until they could build a little 12 x 14 one-room
house.
At the time they celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary, in speaking of this trip and their early experiences
here, Mrs. Morris said: "I wonder if my girls for anybody else's girls would do that today. They were the happiest
days of our lives. We were building a home and we always had something to do."
That desire to keep busy and the spirit of optimism was characteristic of Mrs. Morris throughout her busy life.
Although she was the mother of twelve children, she found time to help others. She was a devout member of the Baptist
church in which she had been active for more than fifty years. Mrs. Morris was one of the few remaining pioneer mothers
to whom the present generation owes so much.
She was the last member of her immediate family of thirteen children.
Surviving are her husband, 88 years of age; four daughters, Mrs. W. H. Stepp and Mrs. Charles Weikal, both of
Kingman, Mrs. W. H. Fullmer of Oakland, Calif., and Mrs. Ray Byers of Victorville, Calif.; six sons, Roy, Norton, Joe, Leo,
Carl, and Virgil, all of Kingman; twenty-two grandchildren and eight great grandchildren."
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