Truckin' on the Western Branch

Fleet Carney Morgan When Fleet Carney Morgan was born in 1917, she came home to the old farmhouse on Carney Farm Lane. Five years later the family moved to a new brick, three-story home on High Street where Western Branch Baptist Church stands now. The land was part of a 1667 land grant. She said, We had a large yard and children congregated there to play Blind Man’s Bluff, Three Steps to Baltimore, and more games. But we lost the home in the Depression and the property was finally bought by South Street Baptist church to build Western Branch Baptist Church. The Carney family owned what is now Green Acres. My father, Wright Bruce Carney Jr., was a farmer and founded, with a Mr. Robertson, what became Coleman’s Nursery after the Depression. I graduated from Churchland High School in June 1934 in a class of 29 and made my debut in 1936. I worked as a typist for $5 a week. Then I met my future husband, Thomas, on a blind date in 1948. I truly loved him and it was standing room only at Trinity Church when we finally married in 1953. I was 34. Elizabeth Warner Respess In a circa 1812 farmhouse named Abigarlos, which family lore translates as “shelter us,” Elizabeth Respess is living close to her roots. She is the granddaughter of Lucy Carney Warner, the last child to be born in the birthing room of Respess’s house. Respess was born in Portsmouth and graduated from Churchland High in 1975, but in between she followed her father, Thomas Warner, in his career with the Department of Defense to Saipan, Vietnam, North China, Shanghai, and Thailand. Thomas Warner was Fleet Morgan’s cousin. Respess came back to Churchland in her senior year of high school, and that was a challenge, she said, because of the integration struggles, the cliques, and the fact that she and her brother, Tom, had no ties to the school. Originally the house had two rooms down and two up with an attic. When the Carney family grew to seven kids, my grandfather, a Navy captain, built a bigger house. This little house had a separate kitchen and was moved three times. Finally it was used as a home for field hands. There is a shotgun blast in the wainscoting supposedly from the Civil War. And there’s also Lysander Kingman—a friendly ghost who walks around the house but doesn’t move stuff.

Fleet Carney Morgan. Image by Sheally

Grandmother Lucy Carney Warner served with the Red Cross in France and was an instigator—every party had to have Lucy!

Ed Gaskins: “In farming— you grow or you go broke.”

Pat Orgain: “ Churchland has a legacy of friendship.”

Alisa Tynch Smith: “Churchland has a small town feel—like an extended family.”

Elizabeth Warner Respess. Image by Sheally

Image by Sheally

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