Taller than MJ & Kobe: Finding Out My Great-Great-Grandfather Was a 6'7" Policeman in 1910
Some of the best genealogy nuggets are hiding in the newspaper archives.
My great-great-grandfather was taller than Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Kobe Bryant, and the Portland Press newspaper even named him “The tallest man in Portland, Maine” in 1894!
Back in 2015, I was searching a database recommended by researchers at NEGHS for the first time called “The Providential Archives of New Brunswick.” I knew my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Morrison, was born in New Brunswick in 1856 and immigrated to Maine in the 1890s, so I crossed my fingers and searched the newspaper archives for him.
Portland Press — It is doubtful whether there is in the city a man taller than Samuel Morrison, who measures six feet and seven inches in his stocking feet. He is about 35 or 40 years of age and is a native of St. John County, New Brunswick. Mr. Morrison’s father was ‘an unusually tall man,’ being over six feet in height. And his grandfather was yet taller. The grandfather came from the North of Ireland to Saint John. They were all men and women of spare habit and having large, bony, strong frames.
When the Portland Press printed this, Samuel and his young family had just crossed the Canadian border into Maine a year before. It clearly didn’t take long for people to notice his massive Kobe-like stature. In the U.S., the average height of a man in 1895 was 5’5” (today it’s 5’8”). Samuel was a full foot and two inches taller than average.
In the 1900 census, Samuel Morrison worked in a stone quarry. But when I found him in the 1910 census, he’d traded his tools for a badge! He patrolled the mean streets of Freeport, Maine (population: 2,460) either on foot or horseback. If I saw that massive cop walking towards me, I’d be on my best behavior, that’s for certain.
Tip: Explore newspaper archives for mention of your family! Ancestry.com has a great newspaper database called Newspapers.com that is quickly becoming the go-to spot for newspaper research online.
If you have ancestors who hailed from New Brunswick, check out the Providential Archives of New Brunswick newspaper database. Daniel F. Johnson’s database is unbelievable and available for free. Focusing primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the archives aren’t just newspapers, the site has databases of birth/marriage/death, cemetery, directories, immigration, land, and military records. If you have ancestors from New Brunswick, you’ll undoubtedly find them somewhere there and learn more about them.
Jack Palmer is a History and Psychology double-major at Duke University. I’ve done genealogy research since I was 10 and love writing about it for family, friends, and anybody else who might enjoy a blast from the past.
Jack, Your 'taller than Kobe' h\l ' hooked me like any good h/l but your skilled way of telling the story is unique! And TBH I just posted about a personal an ancestry story so the genre is of interest.