John Edward Morrison was born on February 10th, 1849, in Charleston, Virginia. With his parents he came to Minnesota in 1857, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died on November 18th, 1919 at Pequot, Minnesota, of a strangulated hernia. Funeral services were held on Sunday afternoon at 2:45 p.m. at the residence of Mrs. James Morrison, conducted by the Reverend F.L. Erlougher, pastor of the Methodist Church. Internment was in the Evergreen Hill Cemetery.

John never married; however, he has found a place in my heart which will always be remembered with fondness and a smile, thanks to the portrait painted so beautifully by my great aunt, Mary DeEtte Morrison Blaurock, in her story Tell Me the Tales. Below is her account of "Uncle Bud".

"...the family, when mother was taken there as a bride of sixteen, consisted of Grandmother, three aunts and Uncle Bud, who lived and died a bachelor. My Grandfather had died not many years after the family came to the community.

Grandfather had brought some good horses with him when they came west and he had dreams of raising good stock, and so he started to build a barn suitable for the plan. It was to be a big structure. The frame-work was up...huge beams, rafters, and the roof was covered...but there it stood, a monument to a dream unrealized, for Grandfather died before it was finished. Neither Father nor Uncle Bud dreamed dreams of such magnitude!

To us it was the "Old Barn" and a wonderful place to play. Because of its bare sides, its earthen floor and broad beams, it could be used for anything we ever thought up...from wild Indians to Church services and a three-ring circus. Uncle Bud put up swings, took them down again, rescued us from places to which we climbed and from which we could not return. He was at our command except during bee season.

I cannot remember the time he ever did a day's work, but he was a gentle soul and a genius at hunting bees. He would spot a bee going about its daily task of gathering nectar (and frightening little girls) and if it was the right sort of bee, which Uncle Bud could distinguish at a glance, that bee's home was doomed! The honey was as good as stored in Grandmother's fruit cellar, for with the tenacity known only to the FBI, the Canadian Mounted Police, and Uncle Bud, the bee after a hard day's gleaning would buzz and zigzag home only to find Uncle Bud patiently waiting with equipment to saw down the tree, smoke out the bees, and a tub in which to carry home the honey!

I remember the respectful tone Grandmother would use when she said, "Your Uncle Bud is following a bee line", when we would ask where he was at noon or supper time. Sometimes Uncle Bud would be gone all night and would come home pretty well stung all over, but full of the thrill of the conquest.

Fran is the one who remembers Uncle's bee hunting most vividly, for she had borrowed a bottle of sweet anise oil that was used to lure bees into the hives. One of Uncle Bud's labor saving devices was to put anise oil in the entrance to an unoccupied bee hive, and if the bees got a good whiff of it they would voluntarily take up their residence in our back yard, saving a lot of leg work for Uncle Bud. The day Fran, my eight year old big sister used anise oil for perfume, she sailed forth feeling no doubt as one would now with a dab of "Evening In Paris" or "Allure" generously applied, but what she attracted was a queen bee! Now, when a queen bee sits down, her whole entourage sits down with her! In about two minutes Fran was pretty well enveloped in bees. Of course, she was frantic. Uncle Bud kept yelling, "Stand still! Stand still! Don't scare the bees!", as he sneaked up with a net, well perfumed with anise oil, and with plenty of dexterity from long practice, he got the bees off with only a sting or two resulting. To this day Fran can't stand the smell of anise oil!

Uncle Bud was a good coon hunter, too, but not as good as Father. Although, perhaps Mike and Lizzy, the old coon dogs, were the real hunters. When the first frost was on the ground and the harvest moon hung big and yellow on the horizon, the baying of the hounds would keep us children awake, and we would say, "Old Mike has him on the run", or, "Lizzy has him treed now", for the voices of the coon dogs were as familiar as the voices of any member of the family.

There is a nostalgic sound in the baying of a hound, that even as a child affected me. I would put out my hand to touch my sister, wondering if she, too, felt the tug at the heart strings, although I did not understand my feelings at the time.

Uncle was an efficiency expert, always thinking up ways to save time, with which he was blessed most abundantly, or of making life a bit more comfortable. On the long journey to and from our nearest town, one would suffer intensely from the cold in the winter months, so Uncle invented a "foot warmer". It consisted of a lantern made-to-order...a ventilated box in which the lantern was placed...the box had slats made to conform to the position in which he placed his feet. One thing he forgot--heavy buffalo robes were under and over the contraption, and although the box was ventilated, the sled was not! After driving several miles in comfort, the lantern exploded, throwing burning oil and setting fire to the robes and sleigh. The horses became so frightened they ran away, upsetting the sled in a ditch. Uncle was a busy man for an hour or more digging out the horses, gathering up the robes and getting the sled ready for the rest of the trip. However, he said the foot-warmer was a success since he was so darn mad he kept hot all the way to town!

The trip to town on that memorable day had been a very special one, and Uncle felt very self-conscious arriving in such a disheveled condition, covered with lamp-black and soot, and scorched here and there.

The special occasion was that he was being sent as an emissary from the home front to meet a cousin who had returned to the home-land in grandeur, not that she intended to visit the "country"...far from it! Her special railway car stood on a side track in Littletown. She told Uncle Bud confidentially that she felt as "Fah above the country folk as the stahs above a mud hole", which was used as a derisive phrase among her country cousins for many years.

Uncle Bud was her favorite cousin, and so, he went to see if the Baroness (for she truly bore that title!) really wanted to be friendly or was just an uppity someone trying to show off. The Baroness evidently passed inspection. Certainly Uncle Bud had the time of his life, and one-by-one all the cousins went to Littletown to visit her, and all were entertained royally. That is, all went to see her except Mother, who felt that the Baroness was a very questionable character. A few years before mother had come into the family, Ann, a very young and beautiful girl, had run away with a stranger...I trust a handsome one...and when next heard from she was in New York. What her life there had been, no one knew, but in a few years she wrote home from Paris. She was by then the Baronesss, and after all these years, possibly fifteen, she was visiting the old hometown in a private car!

Uncle Bud told Mother all the story of the jewels, the beautiful clothes, the telegrams she received from the Baron twice a day, the servants, all the glamorous details, but Mother remained adamant. She relented somewhat when the Baroness sent all the children in the family beautiful wax dolls that she brought from Paris. I laid my treasure on the oven door and the lovely features melted away into nothing. Uncle Bud took a hot teaspoon and did a job of plastic surgery. I do not remember the doll, but I do remember that if anyone had a certain type of nose, the family referred to them as "looking like Mary's wax doll".

I have always been glad that Uncle Bud lived until the age of electricity, automobiles, and other modern inventions.

At one time he was engrossed in perpetual motion and a most intricate gadget was produced, which would indeed run for hours at a time. It probably would have run for days had there been a place to set it up, where it would have been undisturbed. I remember he bought egg beaters by the dozen, using the little fly-wheels for small belts which controlled a balance, working something like a teeter- totter board, the up and down movement being the perpetual motion. When asked how it could be used for any practical purpose, he replied, "I'll invent it and someone else can apply it to whatever purpose it will serve!" Every night the "Thing" would be set up on the kitchen table and all would watch while it teeter-tottered up and down, up and down. As a means of hypnotism it might have served "a purpose", for I would wake up in the morning, not knowing how I got to bed, having gazed until sleep overtook me.

Then, spring came, and with it the bees and the "Thing", which was what we all called it, was put away on a shelf in the smoke house, with a warning to us children to leave it alone, for "it might cut off our fingers'. It was never brought out again. We played with the other parts of the beaters. Mother complained, "Here I have to use a fork to beat eggs, with twenty six parts of egg beaters laying around," for Mother's egg beater had also been sacrificed on the alter of science. One day an extra special one was found on the kitchen table. Mother suspected Uncle Bud had a guilty conscience and had placed it there!

One of the grand occasions of our life was Circus Day. We lived twenty miles from town, which is a long way to jog along in a lumber wagon, but jog we did! We now lived on a farm of our own and another Uncle and his wife and eight children lived on the home place with Grandmother and Uncle Bud. On Circus Day, my Aunt with her eight children, and mother with her three, made great preparations for the trip to town. The men could not be spared from the farm, except for Uncle Bud, who would not have stayed home under any circumstance, so with his wagon load of family, we started out before dawn. We had a big picnic lunch with us and of course all were dressed in our very best. None of us children had ever seen any animals except the domestic variety, and Father had whetted our curiosity by describing at great length, the elephant, and had told us the monkeys would look just like our neighbor, Mike Finnegan! I often wonder if we enjoyed the circus any more than the circus must have enjoyed us.

We were told by Mother to hold each other by the hand so we would not become lost as we stood watching the big street parade, but when Fran saw the elephants walking sedately by, each holding the tail of the one preceding it, she dropped my hand. "I won't hold your hand like an elephant!" she stated, and the word went down the line. One by one the hands were dropped, but we did not become lost.

Such a clamor of questions and exclamations, mostly directed at Mother, whom we expected to answer everything. "How can that girl ride standing up?" "What's the name of that one, mother?", "Mamma, look at that clown!" "Mamma, hold me up so I can see!" Shrill voices kept up the the bombardment, with Mother paying no attention! Uncle Bud had gone off and left us. I think he was a little shy to be seen with so many children.

We met at noon and had our picnic. We chose a spot not far from the town watering trough, and wonder of wonders, a big circus wagon bearing the hippopotamus drove up and the men filled the tank in the cage with water. We had a good view of the huge creature, and when it opened its great mouth we were enthralled. Jo, my little sister, screamed, "That's the one papa said looks like Mr. Finn Finnegan. See his big mouf!" When the tank with the big hippopotamus was driven up to the watering trough, our horses, which had been tied to the wheels of the wagon and were also enjoying their noon-day snack of hay from the wagon bed, became frightened at the sight of the strange creature. Pulling and rearing, snorting and wild-eyed, old Frank finally broke away. Uncle Bud had to run and catch the plunging brute, and in doing so, ripped the sleeve of his coat out at the seam. We still had the circus to attend, so mother took the coat, and looking us over, found enough safety pins and other pins of all sorts to fix the sleeve, as invisible as possible (for Uncle was quite proud and very particular in his dress). During the performance, in his enthusiastic clapping of hands a pin decided to come loose, and Uncle Bud let out an agonizing yell.

"Pick that doggone pin out of my arm hole", he hissed at mother.

"Take off your coat, it's all on the inside", Mother hissed back.

Uncle squirmed around until the coat was off, and between watching the three rings of performers, the clowns and the children, mother fixed the sleeve again. This time Uncle Bud sat stiff as a ramrod, afraid to move!

All things come to an end and the magic day was over and we started home. After a thoughtful interlude Uncle Bud said, "How children can be pinned up and not suffer the torture of the damned is beyond me. That pin was just waiting to stab me if I moved a muscle!"

Before leaving for home we had gone down town to do some shopping or "trading" as most people called it, and by now Uncle Bud was safe, for his sleeve had been sewn up properly. Uncle had given Fran fifty cents and me twenty-five cents, so Fran had invested in some dress material, but I had bought a picture of the snake charmer at the circus. Uncle Bud admired Fran's dress when it was completed, and when he looked at the picture of the snake charmer I knew I had made a good purchase, too. The rest of the summer was spent by us children playing circus. One day when Fran was doing a fancy balancing act on a beam in the old barn, she fell some twenty feet and was practically knocked out, besides breaking Grandmother's parasol. "Oh my dear God, I'm killed, I'm killed". she cried! "Go get Mother!" On second thought, she yelled--"No-no-don't get mother, she'd kill me!"

Mother had many times forbidden us to climb on the high beams of the old barn. Uncle Bud who happened to be near by heard the commotion and ran to the rescue. After making sure Fran was only shaken up and bruised he promised not to tell mother, and to smuggle the parasol into the house somehow. When Mother asked Fran why she was limping, she answered, "Oh, I just fell down!" "A true statement if I ever heard one", said Uncle Bud.

When Grandmother found her broken parasol, Uncle said, "What a coincidence! I've already ordered you a new one!..."

I don't know what the grownups thought of Uncle Ben, but from the many pages devoted to him in Aunt Det's story, I know the children loved him dearly. I can not think of a better legacy to leave behind than this...especially one who never married or had children of his own.