MORTON / ALEXANDER FAMILY

I AM LOOKING FOR ANY INFO ON THE MORTON/ALEXANDER FAMILY, THIS IS WHAT I HAVE
JAMES MORTON MARRIED LOUANNA ALEXANDER 1830 JACKSON CO, AL
HERE ARE MY NOTES, BUT IF POSSIBLE WOULD LOVE TO TRY TO GET COPIES OF STORY, THIS WAS JUST PASSED TO ME, THANKS AMANDA

*(Info from book in Polk County, Mo., genealogicical Society)
In 1830 plus, a sheriff tried to make James Morton vacate his property in Alabama. James Morton shot and killed the sheriff(a Lyman James)Then to escape punishment, he took his large family of four daughters, Susanna and himself to Tennessee where Thomas Alexander had gone. Thomas died in Benton co., Mo in abt 1833. So James Morton, and his large brood followed. Then Elisa Morton was born in Missouri about the time her grandfather died.
When James Morton arrived in Missouri, he served as constable under Judge Alexander for a short time. Then he worked in a saw mill. About 10yrs after he had killed the sheriff in Alabama, a bounty hunter appeared in Warsaw, Missouri and with the aid of some men from Alabama the bounty hunter captured James Morton and took him back to Alabama to stand trial. George Alexander and his relatives gave pursuit to this act for a time, but soon gave up. LouAnn/Susanna Morton did not give up following James Morton. She took a steam boat to Alabama and was with James while he was on trail. He evidently gave title to some land he had in southern Missouri to a lawyer there to help him in the trail. The Lawyer won the case. And James and Souanna/Susanna/Louanna Morton came back to Missoui. The Genealogicial society i Polk Co., Mo. did have copies ofa boook about this case.

NEW NOTES: FROM THE BOOK "WATER OVER THE DAM" compiled by Kathleen White Miles and Kathleen Kely White published: Aug 1, 1966
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Bottom of page- William Rippetoe was the first white man to make his home in this area. Rippetoe came in 1832, the same year that Judge George Alexander settled on Turkey Creek.
The Judge was the son of Thomas and Yeureth Alexander, North Carolinians who came here with him, as did a nubmer of their other children(Although family records are imcomplete, Yeureth is believed to have been a member of the famous Harrison family of Virginia, descendants of

PAGE 8 - Benjanmin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. And as far as the early history of this country goes, one of her huband Alexander's relatives was a signer of the Muhlenburg Declaration, which preceded the Declaration ofIndenpendence.)
Judge Alexander engaged in barter with the Indians on the west of the Pomme de Terre, which was then the lin between the whites and the Indians, ..and it goes on a little bit more and changes to someone else.
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JAMES MORTON WHOM MARRIED LOUANNA/SOME CALL SUSANNA ALEXANDER
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The old log courthouse was a busy place those days.
Then came the kidnapping. And that's when the animosity between the Jones's and Turk's really began to build up.

It seems that a man named James Morton was charged with murder down in Alabama, for killing a sheriff who was trying to arrest him on some charge or another.
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Morton managed to get out of Alabama and to the Warsaw area. (He was related, by marriage to the Jones Family, and also related to Judge George Alexander, one of the most prominent early settlers, though his marriage of the Judge's sister, Louanna.
Eleven years later, a man called McReynolds appeared at the sheriff's office in Warsaw with a copy of an indictment against Morton and copy of the Alabama governor's proclamation offering $400. reward for Morton's return to that state.
The sheriff at Warsaw said "NO."
"Well", countered McReynolds, "I'll sure as hell find somebody who'll help me".
And he leaped on his horse and headed south, across the Osage.
He stopped at the dram shop of Judy's Gap. And he found that the Turks would be more than happy to help him round-up any kinsman, even an inlaw, of the Jones Family.
A party of made up of the old Colonel, his son Tom and several friends and poor James Morton didn't stand a chance.
He was grabbed from behind and hogtied, as he was working at his mill on the edge of a wooded clearing. And after being taken to a farmhouse for the night, the Turk company crossed the river at Warsaw on the ferry and headed out for Alabama.
Louanna Morton, meanwhile, had managed to get word to Judge Alexander and he rounded up a company of friends who set out in pursuit of the Turks across the state. All to no avail, and they returned, angry and tired, to the county seat.
(Louanna was a good wife and a determined one. When she saw the party returning without her husband, she wasted no time. She leaped on her own horse, road at breakneck speed from the little village of Fairfield all the way to St. Louis, hardly pausing to rest her mount. She then took a riverboat down the Mississippi and got to Alabama in time to sit with her husband at his trial and to see him acquitted.
Judge Alexander did more than worry about what was happening to Louanna on her long ridge to the Mississippi.
He saw to it that old Colonel Hiram Turk was arrested on a kidnapping charge.
But the Turks had more than a few legal strings they could pull too and the indictment was quashed.
And the tempers was rising to murderous heats, especially over at the Jones homestead.
With a group of their friends, and Morton's friends, and residents whom the Turks had angered on the matters, they met at the home of the man named Archibald Cock and entered into an agreement- a written agreement - to kill old Hiram Turk.
They also agreed that, for their own protection, any of their company who divulged the conspiracy, would also have a bullet mared with his name.

I have been told he was from an Irish decendant..A Irish man.
When he was 20 he was living in Alabama next to Isaiah Morton..(some kin poss. brother or cousin.)

1850 census Alexander Co, Mo
Morton, James 47 Va farmer BORN IN VIRGINIA
Morton, Susanna 47 Ky BORN IN KENTUCKY
Morton, Martha E. 19 Al BORN IN ALABAMA
Morton, E.E.A. 17 Tn BORN IN TENNESSEE
Elizah Ann 15 Mo BORN IN MISSOURI
As you can tell they traveled alot