Morton House circa 1903

-An Early Photograph of the Morton House on Orange Street-
This Queen Anne Cottage was home to Annie Morton from age 10
until she died in 1976 at the age of 82.

"Beans"

"Miss Annie" Morton's Boston Terrier "Beans" at 9 weeks

This is a very special "Coat of Arms" created by friend and
neighbor - Miss Elizabeth Merwin. In the early 1960s Miss Merwin
designed the Beaufort Plaque.

History of the Beaufort Plaque

Miss Ann Leone Morton

Annie Morton

In The Heritage of Carteret County, cousin Minnie Stanton Simpson wrote:

"On July 5, 1893 in Beaufort, North Carolina, in a house on Front Street, a school teacher was born. She was given the name Ann Leone. Her parents were David William and Minnie Stanton Morton. She had two older brothers, William Simmons Morton and James Austin Morton. The name Ann Leone gave way to Annie Lee, but the teacher was known as Miss Annie.

Since there was no public school in Beaufort at that time, Annie was taught by her mother, who had been a schoolteacher. Later she attended Beaufort school, and on May 9, 1911, she was one of four in the first class to graduate after Beaufort High School became public. (The other three members of the class were Lessie Arrington, Gladys Chadwick and Sally Duncan.) Annie Morton graduated from North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina and she also took courses in education at Columbia University in New York.

Her first teaching was at Newport, NC. Then she came back to Beaufort where she taught second grade until 1925. That year the principal of Beaufort High School, C.W.E. Pittman, took a position in Marion, NC. Miss Morton decided to teach in Marion also. A short time after her move to Marion she was asked by Mr. Wright, president of East Carolina Teachers College in Greenville, NC, to be Dean of Women at that institution. She accepted and remained in that office twenty-five years. Following her retirement from ECTC in 1950, she returned to Beaufort and continued to teach, this time fourth grade, for another ten years.

After her retirement, Miss Morton continued to live in her house on Orange Street, where she kept up a voluminous correspondence with friends and maintained an active interest in the schools. She remembered all of her pupils and was always interested in what they were doing with their lives. She was an active member of The Friends of the Library. She had been instrumental in helping to establish the very first public library in the town of Beaufort.

Although Miss Morton spent many years of her career in an institution of higher learning, her first love was young children and second grade. She didn’t give her students long homework assignments. Her belief was that short assignments, representative of the work the class was doing, would be sufficient to indicate if the student had grasped the method.

Annie L. Morton died February 3, 1976, a few hours after suffering a stroke, at the age of 82. She was buried in the Morton family plot in Ocean View Cemetery in Beaufort.

I have written about my second grade teacher. She was my cousin, her mother being my father’s sister. She would talk to me about our grandmother Stanton, whom I never knew. One of her happy memories was that of receiving a treat of brown sugar each time she visited our grandmother’s house (the little house in which I grew up). The brown sugar was kept on hand in a special container, always in the same place. Those were the days before candy became a household staple."

Minnie M. Stanton - Orphanage 1880

- Masonic Orphanage Asylum built in 1855 -

An 1870 census shows Minnie Stanton's mother, Josephine 41 as head of household with 6 children; Minnie is 3. The 1880 census shows Miss Annie Morton's mother-to-be Minnie Stanton 12 at the Orphanage Asylum in Oxford, Granville, NC . Somehow, Minnie Stanton made her way back to Beaufort, perhaps after meeting David William Morton of Onslow County.

1790 Census - Mortons and Stantons

Included on this 1790 census are:
Benjamin, John, Owen, William Stanton and Joe Pie Stanton
Ann W. Morton and Joseph Morton

Stantons & Bordens on the Newport River

The Geo. L. Morton Co., Manufacturers of Spirits Turpentine, Rosin, Pitch
Wilmington, North Carolina about 1888
(This image is posted as an example of what a mill would have looked like. It may be a coincidence that this one was partially owned by George L. Morton - don't know, as of now, if there is a relation here)

Miss Annie Morton's roots on her mother's side go back to Henry Stanton 1688, who came to the Newport River area of Carteret County about 1732. Minnie Stanton was the daughter of Josephine Marshall and Benjamin Franklin Stanton born in 1830 on Core Sound. Benjamin was the g-g-g grandson of Henry Stanton 1688 who came to the area with the Bordens and other Quakers from Newport, RI. They had mills and boatbuilding facilities on both sides of the Newport.

- Henry Stanton Sr. ca. 1688-1751 was a boatbuilder who established Quaker Core Sound Meeting. His last will and testament left land to his sons at Swimming Point, Queen’s Creek and Bare Banks.

- William Borden Sr. ca. 1689-1748, one of the foremost shipbuilders of his time, was attracted to the excellence and low cost of lumber in North Carolina. He arrived in 1732 with a group of Quakers from RI, settled on the Newport River and began building vessels—becoming one of the South’s pioneer shipbuilders. William Borden was also widely known for the manufacture of duck used to make sails. Borden was elected a member of NC General Assembly but declined to be sworn in as he was a Quaker.