January 19, 2026 • 36 mins
This is the first “murder mystery” episode on our podcast and there is no bigger story in Freemasonry than “the Morgan Affair.” This year marks the 200th anniversary of the 1826 disappearance of William Morgan, an event that ignited a firestorm of anti-Masonic sentiment and nearly destroyed the fraternity in America. To separate fact from fiction, we are honored to host Dr. Ann Bunch, author of the definitive work, "The William Morgan Affair: Masonic Mystery in Upstate New York." She’ll lead us through her investigation, sorting the historical truth of the event, its devastating aftermath, and how Modern Freemasonrs can acknowledge this pivotal moment in the history of our Ancient and Gentle Craft.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concording body, a pendant body,
a Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
Masonic podcast. Yes, still endorse by the Grand Lodge of
New York. Is it a surprise? It's a badge of
Hoonnor for us, and we appreciate their love year after year.
We are firmly into our sixth season. Yeah, I am
finding that hard to believe. And new year twenty twenty six.
Thank god we don't have to write checks anymore. I'm right,
(00:52):
Worship of Brother Michael ars. I want to thank our
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We really really appreciate you being the power behind the podcast.
(01:15):
You can get a free seven day trial to start
your Patreon subscription. In the description yeah right there show notes,
you'll find that boom. The link to get started is there.
We have never done a murder mystery episode before. Is
there any way we can get like spooky murder mystery
music because we're not that type of podcast, but you know,
everybody's wife was listening to one now and for Freemasonry,
(01:37):
there really is no bigger story than the Morgan Affair.
Kind of crazy. This year marks the two hundredth anniversary
of the eighteen twenty six disappearance of brother William Morgan. Now,
this is an event that happened in Upstate New York
that almost killed our fraternity, almost divided our country, and
(01:57):
it's really hard to separate fact from fi. So for that,
we are honored to welcome our guest this week. She
is the author of the book The William Morgan Affair,
Masonic Mystery and Upstate New York Doctor and Bunch. Welcome
to the Crassman Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, thank you so much. It's really great to be
here tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And she provided visual aids to our live streamers. You'll
see I'm holding up her book. It's the definitive work here.
It's the William Morgan affair, Masonic mystery and Upstate New York.
And I know we have never done the podcast murder
Mystery episode here for us, and honestly, I think we
would actually have the most ultimate murder mystery story that
(02:36):
is still a cold case two hundred years later. Before
we get into your book and the very meaningful work
and the investigation that you did into it, why don't
you tell our audience, our listener, a little bit about yourself,
how what you do professionally, and what led you into
William Morgan and freemasonry and upstate New York.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Sure I'd be glad to so. I am a forensic
answerpologist by trade, and I am from Upstate New York.
I came from a Dinah, so born and bred here
in this area, near the epicenter of the Morgan affair.
My education took me to basically start to study bones
(03:19):
in archaeological sites. So I worked in South America, got
my degrees, ended up getting into academics, just pure academics
at Loyola University in Chicago, then at University of Kentucky,
and then shifted gears dramatically to work not in academics,
(03:40):
but for the army, and the mission of this laboratory
that I joined in the mid nineties was them a
POW recovery mission, so to search for, recover, and identify
missing and serve missing in action service members or civilians
from past. So I did that, but that's where the
(04:02):
missing person focus of my research started. I went from
Honolulu to Oswego, New York. So questioning my sanity is
definitely open for table is open for that. My students
wondered about me too when I started to teach again,
but I worked there and began to consult for medical
(04:25):
examiners Onondaga County and now Monroe County as well, So
I'm still involved in missing person searches. I unidentified Jane
and John does. I am now at the State University
of New York in Brockport, so that is where I'm
currently at and working in the criminal Justice department.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
This is going to be such a fascinating episode because,
like I said, you were kind enough to share the
book the William Morgan Affair, and what I found so
interesting about it is that as we talk about a
cold case and you being a hands on forensics we're
going to talk about bones and skeletal remains and all
the sinewy stuff. But then also you kind of had
to fill in some of the gap with history and
(05:07):
actual research because of it's two hundred years old and
these people aren't around to go investigate and talk to anymore.
To start our listener off, who might be unfamiliar with
who William Morgan is and what the Morgan affair was.
It really kind of goes back to what the eighteen
twenties and this kind of as you referred to it,
(05:29):
that the burned over district, Like what was life like
in upstate New York at that time? And who was
William Morgan and how did he get this path to
become a freemason.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yes, this was an interesting time period, and the historians
talk about this part of Western New York possibly part
of Central New York as well as being basically an
area that was kind of from seek change. There's a
bit of upheaval going on, a seeking leadership, reform movements
(06:04):
in Christianity were popping up and popular, So there's something
societal going on that just needed a little bit of
fanning for a fire to develop. I think there was
also a feeling of maybe have and have not at
the time. Who was William Morgan is a great question,
(06:26):
because there are almost two William Morgans that are presented
pretty much regularly, but one seems to be more popular.
If you go to museum, the Holland Land Office Museum
in Batavia, you will see one version. It is scholarly
William Morgan, who is a gentleman. Then there's the other
(06:48):
depiction of William Morgan that is presented in doctor Morris's volume,
and I also have it in my book Side by Side.
He's ad a bit of a different character, a little
bit unsettled, a little bit disheveled. They called him a
boss crank quote unquote, so somebody who maybe a little volatile.
(07:09):
Apparently he got into masonry by supposedly being a member
of the LeRoi lodge. But eventually there was a petition
for a lodge to begin in the city of Batavia.
His signature was on it and support of that. What
I've seen historically reported is that eventually the final petition
(07:34):
to start this lodge did not have his signature on it.
So Morgan apparently discovered that felt felt excluded, and then
you know, animus developed between himself and the local reasons.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So the only thing I know about Batavia is, of
course William Morgan his origination the right. I can't remember
if it's the Batavia mud Dogs or the Batavia mud
Dogs the Minor League.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
BA mock Dogs, right, right, because it's just.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Something you don't forget, right, And it's interesting being a Freemason.
In full disclosure, I'm a Freemason originally from the Albany, Upstate,
New York area, so I'm very familiar with William Morgan
and the story of him. And it's interesting when you
talk to Masons about this, as you never hear that
William Morgan is a good guy. He's always the villain
(08:23):
of the story. And I guess the big question is,
is there's different versions that we're going to get into
kind of the myths that surround the Morgan affair before
we get into some of the real structural evidence. Is
the story of him being a printer or working in
a print shop and threatening to print the secrets of
Freemasonry and some sort of expose eight. Is that still
(08:45):
check with you? Yes?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That does. What I gather is that he found others
that were disgruntled entered David Miller, who was in charge
of a printing press and had had the ability to print,
and encouraged William Morgan at that point to print the
secret rituals of Masonry. And there were others that were
(09:07):
wanting to fund this and kind of taking that side.
And that is one thing that I get into in
the book is to talk about, well, where did this
attitude come from? Where could people have gotten this kind
of you know, disdain or resentment or disgruntlemen if you will.
So David Miller allied himself with William Morgan in this
(09:29):
endeavor and apparently was putting pressure on him to you know,
let's get it done, let's print it. Are you ready
to go? That kind of pressure from one side. So, yes,
that was real. He didn't print have printing press himself,
but he certainly had access.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And just for our listener, for the historical context here,
and we talk about the eighteen twenties, So in America
at that time, as weird as this sounds, like, Western
New York was in Ohio especially was considered like the frontier.
New York State was not the empire state. The canal
system that we know that brought it, that wasn't happening yet.
People were still traveling by horse guns had one shot
(10:05):
in them being a Mason. While it means a lot
to us now in modern times, it meant even more
back then socially and networks and the thought of George Washington. Yeah,
he was the first president, but he had already moved
on and we were a couple presidents deep by the
time this all started to happen. So when we talk about,
you know, his eventual disappearance of September in eighteen twenty six,
(10:30):
America was a much different especially in New York State,
was a much different area than what we thought of here.
And this is what I really liked about your book,
The William Morgan Affair, the Masonic Mystery in upstate New York.
I'll help out our listener if you're looking to get this.
There's going to be a link to buy the copy
of this book on Amazon, and the notes for this
episode just opening up on a plaze. Doctor Ann did
(10:51):
a fantastic job. I mean the research. I used to
watch CSI a lot. I thought I was like reading
an episode of you know, history, CSI Batavia. At certain
point points, especially when we get to this part, because
I like the straight fact of this is what was
going on. So walk us through the established, verifiable facts,
(11:11):
not the myth of the disappearance of William Morgan.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yes, September eighteen twenty six is the is the timeline
where William Morgan vanishes, but it's a little bit of
known facts that come before there's a disappearance. So September eleventh,
eighteen twenty six, William Morgan responds to a claim in
(11:36):
Canon Dagua, New York that he has committed a petty theft.
Apparently he did not return a shirt and a cravat
that he borrowed, which technically could be called theft if
he wanted to do that in a civil suit. So
he responded to that claim. Went to Canandagua, and like
you said, it's not like going to Canandagua from Batavia today.
(11:59):
It's a journey, so it took some effort to get there.
Right in the evening I think of the eleventh, or
possibly the twelfth, I'm not exactly sure on the date.
He is waiting for this peering and is then seen
to be getting into or being shoved into. So take
(12:19):
your pick a carriage horse drawn carriage. As you said,
we have horse travel at this time. The horse carriage
is driven by Freemasons. He has taken out of Batavia
to Ridge Road right along the lake Route one oh
four for people who live here, heads towards Fort Niagara.
Eventually gets to Fort Niagara, then boards a small boat
(12:43):
into the Niagara River, goes out towards the Canadian side
of the river and stops. There are freemasons that are
taking him across. They get to the other side without
him with a separate boat to communicate with the brothers
on the other side, and they're not ready to receive him.
(13:03):
So apparently the plan was let's get him out of Batavia,
let's get him to another country. There's debate about whether
this was something he agreed to and was part of
or was it against as will you know, there's a
question about that. Since they were not ready to receive
him on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, he
(13:25):
was turned around and taken back to Fort Niagara and
kept in the powder room. So this is where a
plan the original plan appears to go south and a
plan B kicks in where he is held in a
powder room, starts to get a little bit upset, maybe
has given some spirits, and that doesn't help, gets a
little bit louder. People can hear a little bit ornery
(13:48):
and belligerent, and eventually the person that maintained the keys
to the powder room is called away, I believe, on
September seventeenth to go repare a lighthouse in the Canadian
side of the river. He's gone until the twenty first,
and when he comes back, William Morgan is not there
in the powder room. So somewhere between the seventeenth and
(14:11):
the twenty first of September, something happened to William and
that is when he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And because eighteen twenty six, it's two hundred years ago,
we didn't have air tags, we didn't have cell phones,
so it taking three days before you notice that somebody
was not around, probably wasn't uncommon act even thirty days, right,
Get in.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
The person who was repairing the lighthouse. When he returned
to the twenty first, he had given someone else the
keys and the ability to manage Morgan and the powder
room and the whole situation. Something happened there, and the
record doesn't reflect clearly what did happen, So then there's
a couple possibilities there. There's a possibility that he was
(15:24):
taken out to the river and pushed overboard bound and
unable to swim and support himself, or pushed over the falls.
That's one possibility is the river he meets his demise.
The other possibility is he was eventually taken across to
the other side, given a horse, given some provisions, was
(15:47):
supposed to await his wife and children who were in Batavia,
and disappeared alive on the other side.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Two things, when you say the other side and the falls,
just for people that aren't familiar with that central western
part of New York, you're talking about Canada and the
Niagara Falls, absolutely gotcha. And they weren't big tourist destinations
as they are now, so there wouldn't have been a
lot of witnesses and people around on own boats with
the little not at all.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
No, not like today.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's what makes this interesting. Now we're going to get
to some of the fallout and how the William Morgan
affair actually grew into a political movement and almost became
the death of Freemasonry here at least in New York
and across North America. But let's get to where you
get inserted in as an investigative, research driven scientist. This
(16:39):
a forensic crime scene person. And that's when we find
a body in eighteen twenty seven. When in eighteen twenty seven,
and where did they find it?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Right, they find a body washed up on the shores
of Lake Ontario in Orleans County. So that is the
mouth of the Oak Orchard River slash Creek that empties
into into the lake near Carlton, New York. It's now
called Point Breeze. So there a body was discovered, a
(17:12):
coroner's inquest was called, which was kind of an in
place autopsy that was set up after the British system.
And what had to happen is a coroner would have
to every county had three corners, a coroner would be called.
They still do today. And then I think twenty twelve
people from the jurisdiction where the death was discovered or
(17:35):
occurred had to be a sump and they would basically
witness what happened and kind of confirm yes, this did happen.
So their witnesses to the whole thing, and the body
was you know, basically treated according to protocol established stature
established gender, established, you know, as much as they could
(17:58):
about what happened, and they did say it did not
seem consistent with mister Morgan. So they are aware he
was still missing, and they made a statement, no, the
biological characteristics don't seem to be consistent with mister Morgan.
They temporarily bury him in Orleans County, awaiting notification of
(18:22):
maybe the nexticin or somebody who might know who is
So they put out a note news article body found
in Batavia in Monroe County. People get wind of this,
especially a politician named Thurlow Weed, and they basically respond
and want to see the body, and they call a
second coroner's inquest and they take David Miller, the printing
(18:45):
press individual, Lucinda Morgan, the wife of William Morgan, Thurlough Weed,
who has a printing precipice of his own in Rochester
and is a is a politician in the New York
state of s and others, and they go and inspect
the body and conclude that it is William Morgan. They
(19:08):
bring the body to Batavia kind of on parade and
actually set the decomposing remains out in someone's yard for
a period of time. So they make a statement and
people say it was quite obvious and unforgettable that witnessed it,
and then apparently bury him temporarily, albeit in this old
(19:31):
cemetery on Harvester Road, which I discussed in the book
and have photographs of. So that's the second corners in. Yeah,
and eventually family members of another individual from Canada here
that there's a body found respond give incredibly detailed description
(19:51):
of the clothing that he's wearing, including sewing repairs done
by his wife, enough information to say, we know what,
we probably need to do another h quest. So they
do another in quest in Genesee County now and eventually
determined that this is not consistent with William Morgan. In fact,
it is the husband of this woman and her son
(20:11):
and friend who appeared to have the inquest called, and
his name is Timothy Monroe. And so the body is
exhumed and taken home to his final resting place in Canada.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Jeez, okay, So as you're talking about this, I'm like,
all right, I know that two hundred years ago bodies
probably decomposed at the same rate as they do now,
but obviously there was temporary bearings, A lot of touching
and like investigating in crime scene police work was much
different than what's done now.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Oh yes, much different. The coroner's inquests. You know, they
did use similar processes if they could. For example, and
this is one thing that really blows my mind is
that dental identifications are very solid. Even today, a forensic
is worth their weight because they really can if they
(21:04):
have the dental records. Now we use X rays. They
didn't do that in the past at the time of
William Morgan, but they would basically look at donal records.
And William Morgan did have very special teeth. He had
something called double teeth, which are teeth that basically developed differently.
And you're born with this condition, it might be noticeable,
(21:27):
it might not. You're fine clinically and there's not going
to be a problem, but people notice this about him.
So to me to misidentify an individual Timothy Monroe and
say this is William Morgan where Timothy Monroe's teeth were present,
they weren't double teeth. So it seems very non scientific
(21:48):
to have even stated for a split second that those
remains were Timothy Monroe.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And then I'm still trying to figure out and I'm
sure our listener might be in the same boat as well. Like,
what was so special about William Morgan's disappearance. It wasn't
like he was well known, maybe even well liked, or
it wasn't like a public it was where was the outrage.
I understand there's a loss of life, and everybody cares
about that as a as a fellow human being. But
(22:14):
what made him so special that a member of the
New York State Assembly was like, ah, I must investigate this, right.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So this is this is why I couldn't avoid getting
into history and politics because this was integra into the
case kind of continuing to have life. He's sure he's missing.
He may or may not be dead, or he you know,
he may or may not be alive. We do not know.
But mister Weed was extremely interested, seemingly to kind of
(22:48):
fan these flames of the polls that we were talking
about of dissatisfaction in the area, maybe resentment, maybe whatever
it was, disgruntlement. There was some political aim have a
kind of counterculture point of view, to drive home and
(23:08):
get attention and maybe get votes for whatever elections were
happening at the time. Supposedly, Thurlow Weed was confronted by
individuals after Timothy Monroe was positively identified and taken to
Canada back home, and Thrillerweed was quoted as saying something about, well,
(23:29):
it was good enough Morgan at the time. So the
good enough, good enough Morgan is the quote from Thorlloughweed.
There's debate about whether he really said it or not,
and to at his dust bed, I believe he stated
I didn't say that, but the quote was still there
and very interesting at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Is I'm sitting here thinking, Okay, this was all happening
about ten within fifteen years of the War of eighteen twelve,
and the sentiment that Americans had and thinking there's the
have nots, there's the haves and the have nots. So
we've always still had that, you know, economic issue. You're
upstate New York. There's really not a lot going on
up there at that time. Here's an opportunity to seize
(24:07):
some sort of movement or moment. So was it literally
just the fact that hey, this guy disappeared and supposedly
three of the people that had disappeared with were Freemasons
and dun, dun, dumb, that's the mystery.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yes, it was that kind of the who you know,
who done it? We think we know you all were
angry with him because he was going to publish secret rituals,
you know, and it was that that threat and then
the response to don't do it please, you know, the
begging of the Freemasons in the Batavia area to say,
(24:46):
to try to dissuade him from doing that. So then
taking him, possibly by carriage, you know, to to Fort Niagara.
Why was that done? You know, so it just seemed
like the fact that we're transporting some but even and
it didn't come. It hasn't been concluded that he was
going along with it, because if we think about it,
(25:08):
he was under a lot of pressure in Batavia. There
were forces coming at him from both sides. There's a
witness named Whitney who had a lot of details about
this time, and he said that he met with William Morgan.
He was down, he was possibly even suicidal at the time,
(25:28):
and maybe wanted to get out of the situation. So
that is a possibility. But yes, I think just the
you know, the fact that guilt by association and there
were people that stood trial for kidnapping, for conspiracy to kidnap.
Those trials did occur in eighteen twenty seven, and after.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
A few seasons ago, we had a Masonic historian, brother
Chris Rulely, come on and he had talked about how
Americans felt after George Washington when I came to the
subject of freemasonry, and that George Washington was beloved and trusted, trusted,
and he's like, well, he was, But you got to
remember who gets to write the history the victors, right,
And you think of like Shay's rebellion and trying to
(26:34):
set up a federal government for the first time, and
it still exists today two hundred years later, where you
have two sides of a political party spectrum and people
with different viewpoints. So not to take anything away from
the loss of a human life, because as your book
points out clearly, this still is a two hundred year
old cold case. And in your William Morgan Affair book,
(26:58):
in chapter five you talk about the Pembroke skeleton, And
what I loved about this is when we earlier were
talking about biological evidence and how things were preserved in
eighteen twenty six and how it's different than today. But
some of the diagrams that you put in that they
were using to measure or examine. Who was this doctor,
Ea Phillips and what did you think about his findings?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yes, so the Palmbrook skeleton was something that I had
not heard about until I started to get into researching
the Morgan affair and who William Morgan was and what happened.
And it was a eighteen eighty one, so we see
it years later, decades later, he's back again. And what
(27:45):
happened was in Pembrooke near Akron, New York. There was
a skeleton found along with it were found interesting I
guess we'd call him artifacts or personal effects. A ring
with the inscription WM, a kind of metal lock box
with burned papers. But they were eligible enough to see
(28:06):
the word Henry Brown and other items. Those who stood
out because they're kind of obviously identify identifying the skeleton
with the ring as a personal effect as William Morgan
or the implication is that this is William Morgan and
(28:26):
that the papers are implicating that mister Brown.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yes, another word that was envisioned I visualized was murder
on these burned papers in this metal box. So Ea
Phillips did exist. He was a medical doctor in Pembroke.
He had a microscope, which made him able to assess
maybe the ring and the papers. However, I found it
very interesting when I read about the situation that the
(28:53):
bones were sort of just shoved off to the wayside,
and the ring, the personal effects, and the papers were
sort of the focal. And it came up in local
news first and then literally like a day or two later,
it hit the New York Times. Bones found William Morgan
discovered that type of headline, and I found it very
(29:14):
interesting that there was no report on the bones at all.
I asked the county clerk, is there anything?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
No, there was.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
There was the ability at that time to look at
the skeleton and make some determinations about the biological sex,
the age the person died, whether they were an adult
or not. For example, you could get some very basic
information their height. You could determine this, and their science
was out there if people wanted to do it. But
I was just fascinated when the bones were just like, Okay,
(29:44):
let's move these over here, let's look at the personal effects,
which would not today be an acceptable way to identify anyone.
So yes, I found it interesting. He's a medical doctor,
mister Phillips, or doctor Phillips, but he wasn't focusing on
the biological information when you looked at the case. I
also found it interesting there was no dust certificate issued.
(30:06):
You have to have a dust certificate if it's a
skeleton or a body. You still need a corner to
sign off. If that is mister Morgan, then finalize this.
And I think that's because there's truly no physical evidence.
I mean, the upshot is we don't have a body.
And you can say that and go, yep, eat a body.
We don't have any evidence of any violent altercation or anything.
(30:31):
We have words. And honestly, the ring and the box
and the papers from eighteen eighty one, those weren't retained either.
So nothing is retained. There's you can't you know, when
I think about a detective looking at a cold case,
they come in they said, this is your case. Just
(30:52):
focus only on this. That's kind of how I treated this.
You might get a file cabinet full of stuff, you
might get boxes, but in this case, there's there's really
no boxes. There's nothing. There's just you know, it's it's
really claims, rumors, gossip and claims. When I got to
the tail end of my research, what I wanted to
(31:15):
do is put in this book everything that I gathered,
because there's a lot about William Morgan out there, but
it's kind of in separate places. It's in separate books, bookblitz,
even online, and I tried to assemble everything kind of
in one place, and I'm sure it's not exhaustive, But
as far as the suggestions about what happened, I did
put them kind of in an orderly fashion and went
(31:37):
through them to see and tried to vet as best
I could. Mind you, when I was doing this research,
it was I started in January twenty twenty, and we
all know what happened right around then. So traveling and
going to Wisconsin to a county clerk's office and that
kind of thing was not going to happen at the time.
But I had the Internet, so I was able to
do a lot of work with census data and communicating
(31:59):
by email and that kind of thing. So basically going
through what the suggestions were as to what happened, besides
saying he died at the hands of others in the
Niagara River, taking the alternate view that he made it
across the Niagara River to Canada, that's a whole realm
of possibilities. Apparently in Batavia, since mister Morgan was missing,
(32:23):
there was an effort to try to find him, and
scouts were sent out to search for him on the
other side, on the Canadian side, and they did see him.
This is the report back to scouts that were sent
out that he was seen riding westward and eventually as
he was trailed by the scouts or detected by the scouts,
(32:46):
boarding a ship at Port Hope. So if that happened,
then he could all the other possible rumors. He was
in Boston, he was in New York City, he was
in Smyrna, Turkey. That all could happen after getting on
that boat vote that ship. But one of the things
that really stood out to me that seemed to have
(33:06):
a little bit more kind of evidentiary potential was this
family claiming relationships to William Morgan on wiki wiki ancestry
and there's like it's like an ancestry dot com. There's
(33:28):
a family Morgan family in Utila, Honduras who claimed that
their you know, patriarch is William Morgan and he there's
a William Grantham Morgan who was his supposedly his son
whose photo is there available to see, and they claimed
(33:49):
that it's about the right time that this could have happened,
that William Morgan might have started a whole separate life
in the Caribbean if that's If that's true, then you
can compare the family lines Jannette, so he had a
daughter and a son and Potato that were very young
(34:09):
when he disappeared. If he started another family in Honduras,
we can compare the Batavia family line to the Caribbean
family line and either use y chromosome DNA, which would
would have to be a male relative. Now he did
have TJ, the son. TJ had a son, but you
(34:31):
would have to track that down genealogically to hopefully find
a relative that's living today from TJ's a line and
then ward grant them Morgan from Utala, Honduras. He does
have plenty of relatives that have made their way back
to the United States San Antonio, I think California. There's
some others, so they're out there to be compared in
(34:52):
why chromosome DNA, But this would mean you have to
contact them basically, have them voluntarily contribute a swab a
buckle swap and you could do that comparison. Another way
is this forensic investigative genetic genealogy. This is done basically
by genealogists who have access to genetic data that is
(35:15):
either either obtained by warrant or obtained because it's publicly
available because someone checked that box when they turned their
sample into twenty three and meters ancestry dot com and others.
So the genetic genealogists could compare those two lines, the
Caribbean line and the Batavial line and see do they
(35:36):
look like they have a common relative. If you get
too far away, we're all going to be fairly similar.
But if you get close enough relatives to William Morgan,
you could make that call with this forensic investigative genie
genetic genealogy. So that's a non invasive way to do
this research and maybe find out if you did live
on in the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Thanks again to my guest this week, doctor An Bunch,
the author of the William Morgan Affair, Masonic Mystery and
Upstate New York. Want to get your hands on a
copy of a book through Amazon. Oh dude, we got
the link right there. Look on the show description and
the notes boom. If you've enjoyed this episode of the
Craftsman Online podcast, next week the first conversation with Right
Worsherful Brothers, who are New York's first Buddhist, Muslim, and
(36:22):
Hindu grand chaplains. That's going to be a good one.
Until next time. I'm Right Worshful Brother, Michael Arsa. Let
peace and harmony prevail.
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concording body, a pendant body,
a Masonic authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman Online Podcast, the only
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Thank god we don't have to write checks anymore. I'm right,
(00:52):
Worship of Brother Michael ars. I want to thank our
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We really really appreciate you being the power behind the podcast.
(01:15):
You can get a free seven day trial to start
your Patreon subscription. In the description yeah right there show notes,
you'll find that boom. The link to get started is there.
We have never done a murder mystery episode before. Is
there any way we can get like spooky murder mystery
music because we're not that type of podcast, but you know,
everybody's wife was listening to one now and for Freemasonry,
(01:37):
there really is no bigger story than the Morgan Affair.
Kind of crazy. This year marks the two hundredth anniversary
of the eighteen twenty six disappearance of brother William Morgan. Now,
this is an event that happened in Upstate New York
that almost killed our fraternity, almost divided our country, and
(01:57):
it's really hard to separate fact from fi. So for that,
we are honored to welcome our guest this week. She
is the author of the book The William Morgan Affair,
Masonic Mystery and Upstate New York Doctor and Bunch. Welcome
to the Crassman Online Podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, thank you so much. It's really great to be
here tonight.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And she provided visual aids to our live streamers. You'll
see I'm holding up her book. It's the definitive work here.
It's the William Morgan affair, Masonic mystery and Upstate New York.
And I know we have never done the podcast murder
Mystery episode here for us, and honestly, I think we
would actually have the most ultimate murder mystery story that
(02:36):
is still a cold case two hundred years later. Before
we get into your book and the very meaningful work
and the investigation that you did into it, why don't
you tell our audience, our listener, a little bit about yourself,
how what you do professionally, and what led you into
William Morgan and freemasonry and upstate New York.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Sure I'd be glad to so. I am a forensic
answerpologist by trade, and I am from Upstate New York.
I came from a Dinah, so born and bred here
in this area, near the epicenter of the Morgan affair.
My education took me to basically start to study bones
(03:19):
in archaeological sites. So I worked in South America, got
my degrees, ended up getting into academics, just pure academics
at Loyola University in Chicago, then at University of Kentucky,
and then shifted gears dramatically to work not in academics,
(03:40):
but for the army, and the mission of this laboratory
that I joined in the mid nineties was them a
POW recovery mission, so to search for, recover, and identify
missing and serve missing in action service members or civilians
from past. So I did that, but that's where the
(04:02):
missing person focus of my research started. I went from
Honolulu to Oswego, New York. So questioning my sanity is
definitely open for table is open for that. My students
wondered about me too when I started to teach again,
but I worked there and began to consult for medical
(04:25):
examiners Onondaga County and now Monroe County as well, So
I'm still involved in missing person searches. I unidentified Jane
and John does. I am now at the State University
of New York in Brockport, so that is where I'm
currently at and working in the criminal Justice department.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
This is going to be such a fascinating episode because,
like I said, you were kind enough to share the
book the William Morgan Affair, and what I found so
interesting about it is that as we talk about a
cold case and you being a hands on forensics we're
going to talk about bones and skeletal remains and all
the sinewy stuff. But then also you kind of had
to fill in some of the gap with history and
(05:07):
actual research because of it's two hundred years old and
these people aren't around to go investigate and talk to anymore.
To start our listener off, who might be unfamiliar with
who William Morgan is and what the Morgan affair was.
It really kind of goes back to what the eighteen
twenties and this kind of as you referred to it,
(05:29):
that the burned over district, Like what was life like
in upstate New York at that time? And who was
William Morgan and how did he get this path to
become a freemason.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yes, this was an interesting time period, and the historians
talk about this part of Western New York possibly part
of Central New York as well as being basically an
area that was kind of from seek change. There's a
bit of upheaval going on, a seeking leadership, reform movements
(06:04):
in Christianity were popping up and popular, So there's something
societal going on that just needed a little bit of
fanning for a fire to develop. I think there was
also a feeling of maybe have and have not at
the time. Who was William Morgan is a great question,
(06:26):
because there are almost two William Morgans that are presented
pretty much regularly, but one seems to be more popular.
If you go to museum, the Holland Land Office Museum
in Batavia, you will see one version. It is scholarly
William Morgan, who is a gentleman. Then there's the other
(06:48):
depiction of William Morgan that is presented in doctor Morris's volume,
and I also have it in my book Side by Side.
He's ad a bit of a different character, a little
bit unsettled, a little bit disheveled. They called him a
boss crank quote unquote, so somebody who maybe a little volatile.
(07:09):
Apparently he got into masonry by supposedly being a member
of the LeRoi lodge. But eventually there was a petition
for a lodge to begin in the city of Batavia.
His signature was on it and support of that. What
I've seen historically reported is that eventually the final petition
(07:34):
to start this lodge did not have his signature on it.
So Morgan apparently discovered that felt felt excluded, and then
you know, animus developed between himself and the local reasons.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So the only thing I know about Batavia is, of
course William Morgan his origination the right. I can't remember
if it's the Batavia mud Dogs or the Batavia mud
Dogs the Minor League.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
BA mock Dogs, right, right, because it's just.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Something you don't forget, right, And it's interesting being a Freemason.
In full disclosure, I'm a Freemason originally from the Albany, Upstate,
New York area, so I'm very familiar with William Morgan
and the story of him. And it's interesting when you
talk to Masons about this, as you never hear that
William Morgan is a good guy. He's always the villain
(08:23):
of the story. And I guess the big question is,
is there's different versions that we're going to get into
kind of the myths that surround the Morgan affair before
we get into some of the real structural evidence. Is
the story of him being a printer or working in
a print shop and threatening to print the secrets of
Freemasonry and some sort of expose eight. Is that still
(08:45):
check with you? Yes?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
That does. What I gather is that he found others
that were disgruntled entered David Miller, who was in charge
of a printing press and had had the ability to print,
and encouraged William Morgan at that point to print the
secret rituals of Masonry. And there were others that were
(09:07):
wanting to fund this and kind of taking that side.
And that is one thing that I get into in
the book is to talk about, well, where did this
attitude come from? Where could people have gotten this kind
of you know, disdain or resentment or disgruntlemen if you will.
So David Miller allied himself with William Morgan in this
(09:29):
endeavor and apparently was putting pressure on him to you know,
let's get it done, let's print it. Are you ready
to go? That kind of pressure from one side. So, yes,
that was real. He didn't print have printing press himself,
but he certainly had access.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And just for our listener, for the historical context here,
and we talk about the eighteen twenties, So in America
at that time, as weird as this sounds, like, Western
New York was in Ohio especially was considered like the frontier.
New York State was not the empire state. The canal
system that we know that brought it, that wasn't happening yet.
People were still traveling by horse guns had one shot
(10:05):
in them being a Mason. While it means a lot
to us now in modern times, it meant even more
back then socially and networks and the thought of George Washington. Yeah,
he was the first president, but he had already moved
on and we were a couple presidents deep by the
time this all started to happen. So when we talk about,
you know, his eventual disappearance of September in eighteen twenty six,
(10:30):
America was a much different especially in New York State,
was a much different area than what we thought of here.
And this is what I really liked about your book,
The William Morgan Affair, the Masonic Mystery in upstate New York.
I'll help out our listener if you're looking to get this.
There's going to be a link to buy the copy
of this book on Amazon, and the notes for this
episode just opening up on a plaze. Doctor Ann did
(10:51):
a fantastic job. I mean the research. I used to
watch CSI a lot. I thought I was like reading
an episode of you know, history, CSI Batavia. At certain
point points, especially when we get to this part, because
I like the straight fact of this is what was
going on. So walk us through the established, verifiable facts,
(11:11):
not the myth of the disappearance of William Morgan.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yes, September eighteen twenty six is the is the timeline
where William Morgan vanishes, but it's a little bit of
known facts that come before there's a disappearance. So September eleventh,
eighteen twenty six, William Morgan responds to a claim in
(11:36):
Canon Dagua, New York that he has committed a petty theft.
Apparently he did not return a shirt and a cravat
that he borrowed, which technically could be called theft if
he wanted to do that in a civil suit. So
he responded to that claim. Went to Canandagua, and like
you said, it's not like going to Canandagua from Batavia today.
(11:59):
It's a journey, so it took some effort to get there.
Right in the evening I think of the eleventh, or
possibly the twelfth, I'm not exactly sure on the date.
He is waiting for this peering and is then seen
to be getting into or being shoved into. So take
(12:19):
your pick a carriage horse drawn carriage. As you said,
we have horse travel at this time. The horse carriage
is driven by Freemasons. He has taken out of Batavia
to Ridge Road right along the lake Route one oh
four for people who live here, heads towards Fort Niagara.
Eventually gets to Fort Niagara, then boards a small boat
(12:43):
into the Niagara River, goes out towards the Canadian side
of the river and stops. There are freemasons that are
taking him across. They get to the other side without
him with a separate boat to communicate with the brothers
on the other side, and they're not ready to receive him.
(13:03):
So apparently the plan was let's get him out of Batavia,
let's get him to another country. There's debate about whether
this was something he agreed to and was part of
or was it against as will you know, there's a
question about that. Since they were not ready to receive
him on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, he
(13:25):
was turned around and taken back to Fort Niagara and
kept in the powder room. So this is where a
plan the original plan appears to go south and a
plan B kicks in where he is held in a
powder room, starts to get a little bit upset, maybe
has given some spirits, and that doesn't help, gets a
little bit louder. People can hear a little bit ornery
(13:48):
and belligerent, and eventually the person that maintained the keys
to the powder room is called away, I believe, on
September seventeenth to go repare a lighthouse in the Canadian
side of the river. He's gone until the twenty first,
and when he comes back, William Morgan is not there
in the powder room. So somewhere between the seventeenth and
(14:11):
the twenty first of September, something happened to William and
that is when he disappeared.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And because eighteen twenty six, it's two hundred years ago,
we didn't have air tags, we didn't have cell phones,
so it taking three days before you notice that somebody
was not around, probably wasn't uncommon act even thirty days, right,
Get in.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
The person who was repairing the lighthouse. When he returned
to the twenty first, he had given someone else the
keys and the ability to manage Morgan and the powder
room and the whole situation. Something happened there, and the
record doesn't reflect clearly what did happen, So then there's
a couple possibilities there. There's a possibility that he was
(15:24):
taken out to the river and pushed overboard bound and
unable to swim and support himself, or pushed over the falls.
That's one possibility is the river he meets his demise.
The other possibility is he was eventually taken across to
the other side, given a horse, given some provisions, was
(15:47):
supposed to await his wife and children who were in Batavia,
and disappeared alive on the other side.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Two things, when you say the other side and the falls,
just for people that aren't familiar with that central western
part of New York, you're talking about Canada and the
Niagara Falls, absolutely gotcha. And they weren't big tourist destinations
as they are now, so there wouldn't have been a
lot of witnesses and people around on own boats with
the little not at all.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
No, not like today.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's what makes this interesting. Now we're going to get
to some of the fallout and how the William Morgan
affair actually grew into a political movement and almost became
the death of Freemasonry here at least in New York
and across North America. But let's get to where you
get inserted in as an investigative, research driven scientist. This
(16:39):
a forensic crime scene person. And that's when we find
a body in eighteen twenty seven. When in eighteen twenty seven,
and where did they find it?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Right, they find a body washed up on the shores
of Lake Ontario in Orleans County. So that is the
mouth of the Oak Orchard River slash Creek that empties
into into the lake near Carlton, New York. It's now
called Point Breeze. So there a body was discovered, a
(17:12):
coroner's inquest was called, which was kind of an in
place autopsy that was set up after the British system.
And what had to happen is a coroner would have
to every county had three corners, a coroner would be called.
They still do today. And then I think twenty twelve
people from the jurisdiction where the death was discovered or
(17:35):
occurred had to be a sump and they would basically
witness what happened and kind of confirm yes, this did happen.
So their witnesses to the whole thing, and the body
was you know, basically treated according to protocol established stature
established gender, established, you know, as much as they could
(17:58):
about what happened, and they did say it did not
seem consistent with mister Morgan. So they are aware he
was still missing, and they made a statement, no, the
biological characteristics don't seem to be consistent with mister Morgan.
They temporarily bury him in Orleans County, awaiting notification of
(18:22):
maybe the nexticin or somebody who might know who is
So they put out a note news article body found
in Batavia in Monroe County. People get wind of this,
especially a politician named Thurlow Weed, and they basically respond
and want to see the body, and they call a
second coroner's inquest and they take David Miller, the printing
(18:45):
press individual, Lucinda Morgan, the wife of William Morgan, Thurlough Weed,
who has a printing precipice of his own in Rochester
and is a is a politician in the New York
state of s and others, and they go and inspect
the body and conclude that it is William Morgan. They
(19:08):
bring the body to Batavia kind of on parade and
actually set the decomposing remains out in someone's yard for
a period of time. So they make a statement and
people say it was quite obvious and unforgettable that witnessed it,
and then apparently bury him temporarily, albeit in this old
(19:31):
cemetery on Harvester Road, which I discussed in the book
and have photographs of. So that's the second corners in. Yeah,
and eventually family members of another individual from Canada here
that there's a body found respond give incredibly detailed description
(19:51):
of the clothing that he's wearing, including sewing repairs done
by his wife, enough information to say, we know what,
we probably need to do another h quest. So they
do another in quest in Genesee County now and eventually
determined that this is not consistent with William Morgan. In fact,
it is the husband of this woman and her son
(20:11):
and friend who appeared to have the inquest called, and
his name is Timothy Monroe. And so the body is
exhumed and taken home to his final resting place in Canada.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Jeez, okay, So as you're talking about this, I'm like,
all right, I know that two hundred years ago bodies
probably decomposed at the same rate as they do now,
but obviously there was temporary bearings, A lot of touching
and like investigating in crime scene police work was much
different than what's done now.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Oh yes, much different. The coroner's inquests. You know, they
did use similar processes if they could. For example, and
this is one thing that really blows my mind is
that dental identifications are very solid. Even today, a forensic
is worth their weight because they really can if they
(21:04):
have the dental records. Now we use X rays. They
didn't do that in the past at the time of
William Morgan, but they would basically look at donal records.
And William Morgan did have very special teeth. He had
something called double teeth, which are teeth that basically developed differently.
And you're born with this condition, it might be noticeable,
(21:27):
it might not. You're fine clinically and there's not going
to be a problem, but people notice this about him.
So to me to misidentify an individual Timothy Monroe and
say this is William Morgan where Timothy Monroe's teeth were present,
they weren't double teeth. So it seems very non scientific
(21:48):
to have even stated for a split second that those
remains were Timothy Monroe.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
And then I'm still trying to figure out and I'm
sure our listener might be in the same boat as well. Like,
what was so special about William Morgan's disappearance. It wasn't
like he was well known, maybe even well liked, or
it wasn't like a public it was where was the outrage.
I understand there's a loss of life, and everybody cares
about that as a as a fellow human being. But
(22:14):
what made him so special that a member of the
New York State Assembly was like, ah, I must investigate this, right.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
So this is this is why I couldn't avoid getting
into history and politics because this was integra into the
case kind of continuing to have life. He's sure he's missing.
He may or may not be dead, or he you know,
he may or may not be alive. We do not know.
But mister Weed was extremely interested, seemingly to kind of
(22:48):
fan these flames of the polls that we were talking
about of dissatisfaction in the area, maybe resentment, maybe whatever
it was, disgruntlement. There was some political aim have a
kind of counterculture point of view, to drive home and
(23:08):
get attention and maybe get votes for whatever elections were
happening at the time. Supposedly, Thurlow Weed was confronted by
individuals after Timothy Monroe was positively identified and taken to
Canada back home, and Thrillerweed was quoted as saying something about, well,
(23:29):
it was good enough Morgan at the time. So the
good enough, good enough Morgan is the quote from Thorlloughweed.
There's debate about whether he really said it or not,
and to at his dust bed, I believe he stated
I didn't say that, but the quote was still there
and very interesting at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Is I'm sitting here thinking, Okay, this was all happening
about ten within fifteen years of the War of eighteen twelve,
and the sentiment that Americans had and thinking there's the
have nots, there's the haves and the have nots. So
we've always still had that, you know, economic issue. You're
upstate New York. There's really not a lot going on
up there at that time. Here's an opportunity to seize
(24:07):
some sort of movement or moment. So was it literally
just the fact that hey, this guy disappeared and supposedly
three of the people that had disappeared with were Freemasons
and dun, dun, dumb, that's the mystery.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yes, it was that kind of the who you know,
who done it? We think we know you all were
angry with him because he was going to publish secret rituals,
you know, and it was that that threat and then
the response to don't do it please, you know, the
begging of the Freemasons in the Batavia area to say,
(24:46):
to try to dissuade him from doing that. So then
taking him, possibly by carriage, you know, to to Fort Niagara.
Why was that done? You know, so it just seemed
like the fact that we're transporting some but even and
it didn't come. It hasn't been concluded that he was
going along with it, because if we think about it,
(25:08):
he was under a lot of pressure in Batavia. There
were forces coming at him from both sides. There's a
witness named Whitney who had a lot of details about
this time, and he said that he met with William Morgan.
He was down, he was possibly even suicidal at the time,
(25:28):
and maybe wanted to get out of the situation. So
that is a possibility. But yes, I think just the
you know, the fact that guilt by association and there
were people that stood trial for kidnapping, for conspiracy to kidnap.
Those trials did occur in eighteen twenty seven, and after.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
A few seasons ago, we had a Masonic historian, brother
Chris Rulely, come on and he had talked about how
Americans felt after George Washington when I came to the
subject of freemasonry, and that George Washington was beloved and trusted, trusted,
and he's like, well, he was, But you got to
remember who gets to write the history the victors, right,
And you think of like Shay's rebellion and trying to
(26:34):
set up a federal government for the first time, and
it still exists today two hundred years later, where you
have two sides of a political party spectrum and people
with different viewpoints. So not to take anything away from
the loss of a human life, because as your book
points out clearly, this still is a two hundred year
old cold case. And in your William Morgan Affair book,
(26:58):
in chapter five you talk about the Pembroke skeleton, And
what I loved about this is when we earlier were
talking about biological evidence and how things were preserved in
eighteen twenty six and how it's different than today. But
some of the diagrams that you put in that they
were using to measure or examine. Who was this doctor,
Ea Phillips and what did you think about his findings?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yes, so the Palmbrook skeleton was something that I had
not heard about until I started to get into researching
the Morgan affair and who William Morgan was and what happened.
And it was a eighteen eighty one, so we see
it years later, decades later, he's back again. And what
(27:45):
happened was in Pembrooke near Akron, New York. There was
a skeleton found along with it were found interesting I
guess we'd call him artifacts or personal effects. A ring
with the inscription WM, a kind of metal lock box
with burned papers. But they were eligible enough to see
(28:06):
the word Henry Brown and other items. Those who stood
out because they're kind of obviously identify identifying the skeleton
with the ring as a personal effect as William Morgan
or the implication is that this is William Morgan and
(28:26):
that the papers are implicating that mister Brown.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yes, another word that was envisioned I visualized was murder
on these burned papers in this metal box. So Ea
Phillips did exist. He was a medical doctor in Pembroke.
He had a microscope, which made him able to assess
maybe the ring and the papers. However, I found it
very interesting when I read about the situation that the
(28:53):
bones were sort of just shoved off to the wayside,
and the ring, the personal effects, and the papers were
sort of the focal. And it came up in local
news first and then literally like a day or two later,
it hit the New York Times. Bones found William Morgan
discovered that type of headline, and I found it very
(29:14):
interesting that there was no report on the bones at all.
I asked the county clerk, is there anything?
Speaker 2 (29:20):
No, there was.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
There was the ability at that time to look at
the skeleton and make some determinations about the biological sex,
the age the person died, whether they were an adult
or not. For example, you could get some very basic
information their height. You could determine this, and their science
was out there if people wanted to do it. But
I was just fascinated when the bones were just like, Okay,
(29:44):
let's move these over here, let's look at the personal effects,
which would not today be an acceptable way to identify anyone.
So yes, I found it interesting. He's a medical doctor,
mister Phillips, or doctor Phillips, but he wasn't focusing on
the biological information when you looked at the case. I
also found it interesting there was no dust certificate issued.
(30:06):
You have to have a dust certificate if it's a
skeleton or a body. You still need a corner to
sign off. If that is mister Morgan, then finalize this.
And I think that's because there's truly no physical evidence.
I mean, the upshot is we don't have a body.
And you can say that and go, yep, eat a body.
We don't have any evidence of any violent altercation or anything.
(30:31):
We have words. And honestly, the ring and the box
and the papers from eighteen eighty one, those weren't retained either.
So nothing is retained. There's you can't you know, when
I think about a detective looking at a cold case,
they come in they said, this is your case. Just
(30:52):
focus only on this. That's kind of how I treated this.
You might get a file cabinet full of stuff, you
might get boxes, but in this case, there's there's really
no boxes. There's nothing. There's just you know, it's it's
really claims, rumors, gossip and claims. When I got to
the tail end of my research, what I wanted to
(31:15):
do is put in this book everything that I gathered,
because there's a lot about William Morgan out there, but
it's kind of in separate places. It's in separate books, bookblitz,
even online, and I tried to assemble everything kind of
in one place, and I'm sure it's not exhaustive, But
as far as the suggestions about what happened, I did
put them kind of in an orderly fashion and went
(31:37):
through them to see and tried to vet as best
I could. Mind you, when I was doing this research,
it was I started in January twenty twenty, and we
all know what happened right around then. So traveling and
going to Wisconsin to a county clerk's office and that
kind of thing was not going to happen at the time.
But I had the Internet, so I was able to
do a lot of work with census data and communicating
(31:59):
by email and that kind of thing. So basically going
through what the suggestions were as to what happened, besides
saying he died at the hands of others in the
Niagara River, taking the alternate view that he made it
across the Niagara River to Canada, that's a whole realm
of possibilities. Apparently in Batavia, since mister Morgan was missing,
(32:23):
there was an effort to try to find him, and
scouts were sent out to search for him on the
other side, on the Canadian side, and they did see him.
This is the report back to scouts that were sent
out that he was seen riding westward and eventually as
he was trailed by the scouts or detected by the scouts,
(32:46):
boarding a ship at Port Hope. So if that happened,
then he could all the other possible rumors. He was
in Boston, he was in New York City, he was
in Smyrna, Turkey. That all could happen after getting on
that boat vote that ship. But one of the things
that really stood out to me that seemed to have
(33:06):
a little bit more kind of evidentiary potential was this
family claiming relationships to William Morgan on wiki wiki ancestry
and there's like it's like an ancestry dot com. There's
(33:28):
a family Morgan family in Utila, Honduras who claimed that
their you know, patriarch is William Morgan and he there's
a William Grantham Morgan who was his supposedly his son
whose photo is there available to see, and they claimed
(33:49):
that it's about the right time that this could have happened,
that William Morgan might have started a whole separate life
in the Caribbean if that's If that's true, then you
can compare the family lines Jannette, so he had a
daughter and a son and Potato that were very young
(34:09):
when he disappeared. If he started another family in Honduras,
we can compare the Batavia family line to the Caribbean
family line and either use y chromosome DNA, which would
would have to be a male relative. Now he did
have TJ, the son. TJ had a son, but you
(34:31):
would have to track that down genealogically to hopefully find
a relative that's living today from TJ's a line and
then ward grant them Morgan from Utala, Honduras. He does
have plenty of relatives that have made their way back
to the United States San Antonio, I think California. There's
some others, so they're out there to be compared in
(34:52):
why chromosome DNA, But this would mean you have to
contact them basically, have them voluntarily contribute a swab a
buckle swap and you could do that comparison. Another way
is this forensic investigative genetic genealogy. This is done basically
by genealogists who have access to genetic data that is
(35:15):
either either obtained by warrant or obtained because it's publicly
available because someone checked that box when they turned their
sample into twenty three and meters ancestry dot com and others.
So the genetic genealogists could compare those two lines, the
Caribbean line and the Batavial line and see do they
(35:36):
look like they have a common relative. If you get
too far away, we're all going to be fairly similar.
But if you get close enough relatives to William Morgan,
you could make that call with this forensic investigative genie
genetic genealogy. So that's a non invasive way to do
this research and maybe find out if you did live
on in the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Thanks again to my guest this week, doctor An Bunch,
the author of the William Morgan Affair, Masonic Mystery and
Upstate New York. Want to get your hands on a
copy of a book through Amazon. Oh dude, we got
the link right there. Look on the show description and
the notes boom. If you've enjoyed this episode of the
Craftsman Online podcast, next week the first conversation with Right
Worsherful Brothers, who are New York's first Buddhist, Muslim, and
(36:22):
Hindu grand chaplains. That's going to be a good one.
Until next time. I'm Right Worshful Brother, Michael Arsa. Let
peace and harmony prevail.
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