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Morris plaques rededicated at Virginia's Chapel

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By Andrew Brown

Maggie Morris, 27, was just hoping to get a photo of the small monument in Cedar Grove dedicated to one of her distant ancestors while she was on her way from Virginia to Kentucky.

But when the Chicago resident pulled up to the Virginia's Chapel along W.Va. 60 with her boyfriend, she encountered roughly two dozen people gathered at the small church where the monument is located.

Many of them, she would come to find out, were also descendants of the man she came to pay homage to, William Morris, one of the first permanent settlers in the Kanawha Valley.

During a small ceremony Saturday afternoon, two refurbished steel plaques that record the life of William Morris and his son, William Morris Jr., who later became one of the first justices of Kanawha County, were rededicated.

Among the crowd gathered for the event were members of the local chapter of the William Morris Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the West Virginia Sons of the American Revolution Color Guard, several Morris descendants who still live in the Kanawha Valley and one descendant who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

"This was just pure irony," Morris said, as she waited for the Daughters of the American Revolution to unveil one of two markers.

The event, which included a short history of William Morris and his descendants, was organized by the Daughters of the American Revolution who paid to have the two aging plaques refinished.

Linda Hendrickson, the regent of the William Morris Chapter, said the newly mounted plaques would ensure that the history of William Morris and the site of Fort Morris, a Revolutionary War-era fort, would not be lost.

"I think there is a lot of history that is being lost in the valley," Hendrickson said, who is herself a descendant of the 18th century settler.

Ray Lewis, another 68-year-old descendant of William Morris, said the event was personal for him as well.

The Kanawha City resident likes to say if people don't know history, they are doomed to listen to him repeat it.

"It's good to get the family back together," he said, before getting a photograph with the monument.

Reach Andrew Brown at

andrew.brown@wvgazettemail.com,

304-348-4814 or follow

@Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.


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