Wilmington Historical Society Digital Library

Frederick William Morris Collection

Title

Frederick William Morris Collection

Description

Location: Shelf 2, Row 2

Frederick William Morris was born on July 19, 1865, in Lambeth, Surrey, England to parents William Frederick and Jane Elizabeth Morris (née Perkins). The Morris family descended from a long line of printers. With the promise of employment, and at the urging of relatives who had left England and settled in America in 1868, William and Jane and their four young sons immigrated to Chicago, Illinois in 1872.


By the time they arrived, the Chicago fire of 1871, followed by the financial panic of 1872-1873, had created difficult circumstances for the family. As the eldest son, Frederick soon left school to work as a print shop errand boy in an effort to help support the growing family. In 1879, he was apprenticed to a printing firm, where he worked until 1888.


Frederick married Mary Alice Ponnay on March 28, 1887, at the home of his parents in Chicago. The couple relocated to Portland, Oregon in October 1888, where they later had two sons, Frederick William, Jr., born in October 1893, and Joseph Edward, born in December 1897. In 1904, while the family vacationed in Southern California, an opportunity arose to start a weekly newspaper in Wilmington, California. Frederick and his brother-in-law, Joseph David Ponnay, bought the Wilmington Journal and published their first issue on November 5, 1904. By the following fall, the paper had been sold to T. W. Williams.


After selling the Wilmington Journal, Frederick was hired as a printer for the Los Angeles Express newspaper, where he spent the remainder of his career. He was deeply involved in the Freemasons, having been sponsored by his employers in the 1880s, and rose up the ranks of the organization throughout his lifetime. Frederick William Morris passed away on September 20, 1938.

Creator

Morris, Frederick William, 1865-1938

Date

1892-1918

Contributor

Wilmington Historical Society

Rights

The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law beyond fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Identifier

FWM

Abstract

The Frederick William Morris Collection primarily documents his career as a professional printer in the Los Angeles area between 1902 and 1906, but also contains examples of his work while living in Portland, Oregon, and a small amount of material related to family history.

Table Of Contents

Box 1
Folder 1: Family History Sketch
Folder 2: Historic Reprints, Piccadilly Circus, Rotten Row, London
Folder 3: The Hourly Typo, November 27-28
Folder 4: Letter to Fred William Morris from W. C. Wilson, 1905 May 9
Folder 5: Morris, Joseph Edward, Polytechnic High School Diploma, 1918 June 20
Folder 6: Newspaper Clippings, 1902, 1905-1906
Folder 7: Newspaper Clippings
Folder 8: Newspaper Clippings Scrapbook, 1904-1906
Folder 9: The Ore-Groan-Ian, vol. 1, no. 1, 1892 March 26
Folder 10: Tintypes, Unidentified Individuals
Folder 11: Wilmington Promotional Envelope

Map Case 8
Flat File 1: Los Angeles Daily Times Newspaper Clippings, Wilmington Journal Newspaper Clippings, 1904-1905
Flat File 2: Untitled Newspaper Clippings

Collection Items

Collection Tree

  • Frederick William Morris Collection

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