Ada McPherson Morley

 
Ada led a strong and remarkable life.  While alive she was occasionally called "the brainiest woman in New Mexico!"  Ada had strong opinions and passions for her causes...which were many. She often delivered persuasive speeches on behalf of those causes, especially her vehement anti-alcohol advocacy.  Likewise, Ada was a voluminous writer of letters to the editors and politicians of her era.  How and where did Ada become such a capable orator, writer and proponent of social causes?

It all started when Ada McPherson was born on August 26, 1852, in Winterset, Iowa, to Marquis Lafayette and Mary E. Tibbies McPherson. Although we have found nothing (yet) about her childhood, Ada's father set the stage, tone and tenor of her life.

As a youth McPherson was tutored and mentored by a highly educated Englishman named Preston. He attended Indiana's Asbury University and became a lawyer, eventually settling in Winterset, Iowa, in 1850 where his law firm's reputation spread throughout Iowa. He had an unusual vocabulary, his pronunciation was good, and his reading had been extensive, particularly in history and in the literature of oratory, both ancient and modern. His powers of wit and humor, of sarcasm and invective and denunciation as well as of declamation and reasoning and his universally high repute enabled him to hold his own, even in counties where he was largely a stranger. McPherson was a man of the highest principles and was an uncompromising enemy of evil in all forms. He had a bitter hatred of saloons and the liquor traffic and delivered temperance addresses in the villages and at the country settlements in Madison and adjoining counties while living in Winterset. McPherson was elected twice to the Iowa State Senate serving eight years. He was one of the leaders in securing legislation which gave a married woman the right to own property, to make contracts, to sue and be sued, and which gave her the same right in her husband's property as the husband had in the wife's property at death. The legislation then adopted with reference to the rights of women has remained upon the statute books until the present day.

After reading about Ada's father, it's easy to understand why she enrolled in the State University of Iowa, the first public university in the U.S. to admit women.  Judging from her father's background, it's reasonable to presume Ada received a top notch early education and was instilled with her father's values, behaviors, beliefs and abilities.

Engraving shows State University of Iowa in the 1860's.  It is now known as The University of Iowa.

Since she was born in 1852, six years after W.R, Morley's birth, it's likely that Ada enrolled at State University of Iowa no earlier than 1868.  About that time W.R. Morley had reached his zenith as a Big Man on Campus.  We learn from someone who knew him as a classmate then that he "was one of the brightest students in the college. He (had) won the esteem of his instructors and respect and love of his classmates. In the recitation room or in the halls of the literary societies Morley could be always depended upon for a correct answer or an able speech." (See W.R.'s obit for source of quote.)

Ada and Morley must have quickly fallen in love during their time at State University of Iowa.  Morley left the school in 1869 to begin his illustrious railroad engineering career.  Ada remained in her studies presumably until she received an 1872 degree in English Literature. She and Morley were married shortly after her graduation.
 

After the wedding Ada and her new husband set forth to Cimarron, New Mexico, a largely lawless little hamlet of about 300 people, to take up residence in the old Lucien Maxwell adobe mansion. W.R. was chief engineer and general manager of the 1.7-million acre Maxwell Land Grant.   

Somehow, someway at sometime, W.R. and his bride Ada ran afoul of the infamous Santa Fe Ring. Details are dubious but the upshot seems to be that W.R. and Ada founded a small newspaper and began a purported campaign against the Ring.  Ada eventually got in some hot legal water while supposedly attempting to retrieve a letter critical of Catron.  Ada's grandson Norman Cleaveland goes so far as to say the Ring put out a contract to kill W.R.  The plotline of the Morley Family's Life & Times in Cimarron is murky and seems overly reliant on hearsay, sketchy stories and even some tall tales.

Three certifiable facts of The Morleys Time in Cimarron are that Agnes, Ray and Loraine were born there in the old Maxwell mansion.

W.R.'s classmate and Friend, newspaper publisher J.H. Koogler, glossed over the Morley's vicissitudes in Cimarron saying in W.R.'s obituary only that "In 1874 he made a trip to Europe to aid in reconciling the conflicting interests in the grant, but no real harmony could be secured among the rival parties. The affairs of the company necessarily languished in consequence of the panic of 1873 and internal dissensions, and Mr. Morley becoming tired of the inactivity thus occasioned, accepted service in 1876 as engineer on the Denver and Rio Grand railway, then building across the mountains from Cucharas to Alamosa. He did some fine engineering on this line, and the famous mule-shoe curve on the Veta Pass will always stand as a monument to his mathematical skill." (See W.R.'s obit for source of quote.)

Life moved on for Ada and her children.  The Family lived in Old Mexico from 1879 to 1882.Perhaps her crowning moment of joy during her time with W.R. was on October 25, 1882, in Nogales, Arizona.  That's when she was designated to drive the final ceremonial spike joining newly laid Mexican rails to their America counterparts.  Agnes tells the story in great detail on Pages 15-16 of "No Life for a Lady."  Nowhere else is such an account detailed in the historical records I have yet found.

After W.R. was killed by an accidental rifle discharge, Ada was temporarily cast adrift. She was surrounded by people trying to tell her what to do.  One smooth talking southerern charmed Ada into marriage and convinced her to invest heavily in the cattle business.  He rather quickly abandoned The Morley Family but Ada carried his last name "Jarrett" well into her later years.

Ada's happenstance metamorphosis into "ranch woman" is documented in "No Life for a Lady" and need not be repeated here. Agnes Morley Cleaveland wrote the book in the late 1930's with at least 50 years of hindsight to evaluate those times of change for The Morley Family.

After studying other available information sources about Ada, we feel Agnes gave rather short shrift to her Mother.  Glancing mentions are given to Ada's many causes and passions.  Ada had a busy and complex life away from the Datil Mountains.  Her name appears in various newspapers hundreds of times.  She spoke far and wide and wrote hundreds, if not thousands, of letters to various editors and politicians.  Her upbringing undoubtedly influenced her active role in the WCTU.  Ada is also given credit for starting a New Mexico chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  Ada spent years working for women's rights and suffrage. She put herself out on the very forefront of those efforts, earning respect far and wide for her unstinting persistence.

Perhaps Ada's most intriguing, if not downright strange, life chapter was her association with "The Healer"  Francis Schlatter. Ada was so smitten with reports about Schlatter she went to join the throngs awaiting his miracles in Denver.  It was major national news when Schlatter disappeared.  No one could find him.  Somehow in ways I do not yet fully understand, Schlatter and his old white horse, Butte, found their way in a mid-1890's winter to Ada's Datil ranch house.  There he spent three months under Ada's care while secluded inside the big White House.  The incident is described in "No Life for a Lady."  Likewise, Ada went on a self-styled 1890's speaking tour describing the story and its odd, barely-believable circumstances.  Ada even self-published a small book she claimed was dictated to her by Schlatter.  Grand son Norman Cleaveland published a book about the story.

Sometime around 1905, plus or minus, Ada went blind and remained largely blind for the rest of her life.  Of course, being blind didn't stop her from pursuing her causes, writing her letters and even speaking here and there now and then.

Ada passed on December 9, 1917, in Magdalena.  Oddly, her death was barely mentioned in newspapers of that era.  Only "The Evening Herald" of Albuquerque bestowed a few words of eulogy on her saying: "No more brainy, idealist ever lived than this Tolstoi of the Datils."

Luckily, today there exists a New Mexico "Official Scenic Historic Marker" honoring Ada's Memory.
We hope someday a professional historian chooses to tackle The Life & Times of Ada McPherson Morley.  She certainly deserves more than the fragmentary sources have afforded her over the past 105 years since her passing.

Here's Ada's Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_McPherson_Morley
Note that the Wiki has several factual errors and editorializes on some of the information presented.