Morean, Alexander B.

Born: 1819-05-15 Kent County, Maryland

Died: 1889-11-19 Saint Louis, Missouri

Flourished: 1854-09-07 Jerseyville, Illinois

Following his mother's remarriage in 1833, Alexander B. Morean moved with his family to Carrollton, Illinois where he became a store clerk. He began his own business in 1840 and settled in Jerseyville four years later, where he continued in the mercantile line and served as postmaster. Morean was active in the local community and was a charter member of the Jerseyville Division of the Sons of Temperance in August 1847, a charter member of the Jerseyville Freemasons lodge in 1850, and a trustee of Shurtleff College from 1856 to 1862. In 1850, he owned real estate valued at $5,000. Morean was an incorporator of the Jacksonville and Carrollton Railroad in 1851 and a commissioner of the Rock Island and Alton Railroad five years later. Morean was active in Republican politics and ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois Senate in 1858. In 1860, Morean was employed as a miller and owned $13,000 in real property, with a personal estate valued at $1,000. He married in 1842 and he and his wife had nine children.

The Family Fire-Side Book; or Monuments of Temperance (Philadelphia: Leary & Getz, 1853), 290-91; Oscar B. Hamilton, ed., History of Jersey County Illinois (Chicago: Munsell, 1919), 154, 398, 414; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Jerseyville, Jersey County, IL, 1; “An Act to Construct a Railroad from Jacksonville, in Morgan County, to Alton, in Madison County,” 15 February 1851, Private Laws of Illinois (1851), 193-98; The Alton Weekly Courier (IL), 21 February 1856, 3:7; Jubilee Memorial of Shurtleff College, Upper Alton, Ill. (Alton, IL: Daily Telegraph Steam Print, 1877), 10; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 October 1856, 3:1; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 October 1858, 3:1; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Jerseyville, Jersey County, IL, 42; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Ward 21, Brooklyn, Kings County, NY, 37; Missouri, U.S., Death Records, 1850-1931 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2008).