Mary May Morgan McGuire

Mary May Morgan was born at 820 Samuels Ave in Fort Worth on August 15, 1881 (home no longer standing). The home stood just two blocks from the Pioneers Rest Cemetery. Her parents were Conrad B. and Hannah Morgan, and they came to Fort worth in a covered wagon after the close of the civil war.¹ Her father served in the Union Army for the 49th Ohio Infantry.² Their home on Samuels Ave was the first two story home built on the prominent thoroughfare and was constructed with timber brought by ox cart from East Texas.

On April 5, 1901, May married Milton Francis McGuire at the home of Rev. James Meyers.³ Milton worked as an Engineer for the Frisco Railroad. After their marriage, they continued to live in her childhood home along with many of her siblings. On August 15, 1911, Milton passed away at the age of 40 in the home on Samuels Ave.⁴ May and Milton had no children, and she found herself a young widow at the age of 30.

Following the death of her husband, May decided (in 1912) to enter All Saints Hospital School of Nursing in Fort Worth. After graduation, she became a nurse for the American Red Cross. By 1917, the United States entered World War I and May decided to answer the call for women to enlist in the U.S. Army as nurses. She was the first WWI nurse to enlist from Fort Worth. She was assigned to Selfridge Field, Michigan where she was a specialist in the laboratories preparing serum used to treat the influenza outbreak known as the Spanish Flu. After her discharge, she returned to Fort Worth and later became the Commander of the Worth Post of the American Legion. She was also a member of the Trinity Episcopal Church.

In the later years of her life, May became an invalid and lived at the Veterans Hospital in Bay Pines, Florida. In 1945, doctors gave her the prognosis that she did not have long to live and her wish was to come home to Texas. On April 4, 1946, May died in her childhood home among family, in the very bedroom where she was born. Above her deathbed, U.S. and Texas flags hung, of  which she spoke fondly of even at the hour of her death.⁵