Death Notice in newspaper (Galveston Daily News), a summary:
Captain Edley Morriss, age 36, son of Ritson Morriss, died at his mother's home.

Multiple members of the family had been stricken with TB (clearly his father, clearly his maternal uncle, Monroe Edwards, possibly his maternal grandfather, Amos, who died of "bilious fever", wakened by it). It was a contagion that may take ten to fifteen years once active, killing its victims slowly. Perhaps that is why Edley died so young? The other affliction common for males in his age group? Slow deterioration from Civil War injuries.

Afflicted young men recognized the TB symptoms, once the sickness turned active, understood they would die, having seen what happened to other family members stricken earlier. Some thought it must be hereditary, in the less scientific days before "germ theory". Either way, believing it was hereditary or once the ease of contagion to children became known, many tended not to marry. Was Edley one?

The young women's choice, with a shortage of healthy young men, post-Civil War, was to spend a long time looking for someone healthy, then accept that an elderly man or a war-worn spouse seriously hurt by his wounds might not live long, expected widowhood? Was that the case for his bit-older sister, Ada? She remained single through her 1870 Census. She and Edley were counted while both, in their mid-20s, living at their mother's big farm house. Edley was still, for now, doing the farming. (A war-widowed older sister, Mrs. Brenner, had also come, with her two children, to their mother's house. She would be the one lamenting the end of slavery, in a Galveston paper, post-Civil War, pre-Hurricane, an attitude not healthy for her children to hear. She and her son survived the hurricane, ended in New Mexico. Maybe she apologized to her son, for sending his father off to a horrid War? He was not with them in any post-War Census.)

Ada, soon after the 1870 with Edley and the family's widows, married a Mr. Brantley, who would be deceased before her 1880 Census as a widow, still in the Morriss family home. The marriage was implied by her three sons surnamed Brantley, Edward, Ritson, and Lee, ages matching births 1872-1876. (A good copy of Ada's marriage record is not found, only one readable as an "Ida Morris", who married an "Edward L. Brandley", in Oct. of 1870. The handwritten record had too many mis-spellings to be certain. Its image, archived at FamilySearch.org, is located page 425ish or so among some 600 pages of records. However, there is no "Ida Brandley" in any later record, so Ida seems likely the same as Ada Brantley of Harris County.) Their eldest son was likely named for the spouse missing by 1880; their second son, for her and Edley's longer-deceased father, Ritson Morriss, with the youngest, Lee, to be a hurricane survivor, yet, not long-lived.

As Edley Morriss fell out of tax records for the Morriss' Harris County land, Ada Brantley came in. Did she take over the farming work, once he was too ill, or needed a "last hurrah" as a ship captain? Women had discovered they could do a lot, when the men went off to war. Their sister, Mrs. Bremer, was not in the tax records?

Did changing his occupation, from farmer in 1870, to ship captain in 1880, let him "see some of the world" before he died? On shipboard, as captain, he could easily keep his distance from people, when sick and coughing, quarantined in his own cabin? Or, he quit once the serious coughing started?

He returned to his mother's house to die. Mrs. Morriss had moved, since the 1880 Census, across the nearby Harris County line, into Galveston, so they'd been there only a two years when he died. The news notice of his death gave her new address as at 12th and Mechanic, a neighborhood to be drastically damaged in the coming flood of Sept., 1900, which he would not live to see. (Maybe the large farmhouse called Elmwood Plantation had already become uninhabitable, damaged by a subsidence problem on that part of the coastline, sinking? Even if the burial area could still be used, for awhile? Eventually, it would sink as well. )

The early family used private family burying grounds, one made part of a public burial place later. In addition to Elmwood, at Seabrook's edge, inside Harris County, an earlier grounds, across the waters (Buffalo Bayou?), was at the edge of San Leon, in Galveston County. It had held his grandfather, Amos Edwards. Several more had been buried at San Leon? Edley's two oldest sisters had married a Dobie and a Menard, who had relatives on the Galveston side? Early burying grounds were on their family ranch lands, but not all of those lands in Harris County. Amos had talked the Spanish into huge land holdings, based on a headcount of relatives and employees brought into Texas. It's suspected people he called "employees" were slaves, his untruth maybe made seemingly true by paperwork trickery. the technique involved was made public after NY financiers sent Amos' son to prison for financial fraud.

Amos' land was simply too large for one extended biological family to farm, tempting some to own slaves.

The last sibling burial location known with certainty was of his sister Virginia, in 1915, on seaside Menard land, described as about two miles away from where Elmwood had been, so in Harris County. (Elmwood's location, using a very old map off the house location, was at the south end of modern Seabrook, about where Clear Lake waters flow in to Galveston Bay, near where Tod Road ends.)

Mary Jane Dobie (Edley's sister) and her spouse last paid land taxes in Harris County under Dobie names, around 1859. The Dobies seemed to be the ones owning a large number of slaves, judging from their 1850 "Slave Schedules" in Harris County. (It's a shock to discover that in the the family, morally important to stop all talk that it was good for the people enslaved, morally important to say a huge apology owed, both to all the young men who died, both sides, and to all those enslaved, their descendants who must live with the aftermath of slavery.)

At some point, either circa 1859, or after Mary Jane died in 1863, the Civil War not yet decisive, the Dobies moved to the Corpus Christi area. They ended inland, off the coast. A bit safer from storms? The Dobie grave markers they'd left behind, on their old ranch land near Elmwood, were so old, that few remained legible or even standing? Without a marker to find, her grave is hard to verify. Maybe believing that people would be buried where taxes were later paid, someone put Mary Jane's gravepage at the later family cemetery called Dobie-McWhorter, in Lagarto, TX. Her daughter, Minerva Morriss Alexander, maiden name Dobie, however, is the one who would clearly be buried in Live Oak County, at Lagarto.

After sister Virginia Menard died, in 1915, a larger and more modern cemetery, about two miles from the Menard burials, was set aside for public use, allowing non-family burials. It's called Seabrook Cemetery. The Menards had taken possession of the old Dobie lands next to Elmwood, then transferred them to someone else, who later donated the land for Seabrook. The older Dobie grave section was grandfathered in to newer Seabrook. Mary Jane Dobie is now said to be buried there.

Edley's sister nearest-in-age was Ada, married name Brantley, a likely "best-buddy" when they were children. She was declared a Civil War widow, in a special US Census of War pensioners and widows, done in 1890. Texas records can be hard to find for some young soldiers sent off to fight a flawed war. Edley's name was not there, as already deceased, leaving no widow.

Ada's three boys may have seen Edley as a father figure?

Ada seems to have re-married in 1900? Her sons were no longer with her, for the Census that year. They were newly in boarding houses in Galveston, pre-Hurricane, each saying they had been at their current job only for only three or four months, the 1900 being the first census asking that kind of question. The big hurricane was coming. The 1900 Census would be the last good snapshot of the larger population, before the hurricane subtracted a large number, drove others out.

His youngest nephew by Ada was boarding with others as part of a hay-making crew (Lee Brantley). The elder two nephews were boarding together, a laborer and a blacksmith (Edward/Eddie and Ritson Brantley).

NOTE: Edley's birth year is calculated by an old undertaker's method (counting back 36 years, his age at death, from his death year of 1882).

His US Censuses--

1870, at his mother's house, farmer, single. Also there in 1850 and 1860, male siblings present, not just female.

1880, living independently, ship's captain, still single.

His uncle Monroe's trickery -- Amos Edward' most public son would go off to a NY prison, guilty of slavery, but "sent up" for other things. NY had stopped slavery there.
Its prosecutors could not touch son Monroe Edwards for bringing a slave into their state pre-Civil War. Maybe unaware of that, they "got him", instead, on forgery of financial documents. The 60% rule of the old Constitution prevented making slavery illegal anywhere. (In its practical impact, every 100,000 slaves were to be counted as if 60,000 pro-slavery whites. Affected counties would get added representatives for such fictitious whites.)

A book written about him later disclosed how that uncle, Monroe Edwards, covered up his sin. He'd had brought ex-slaves in, freed in Cuba. Cuba did not yet teaching reading. They'd been offered work, later told to agree to TWO sheets of paper. One paper was for a temporary indenture. Indenture was a temporary slavery still legal, saying those leaving their witnessed mark were voluntary employees, not slaves .

Something similar was used for Amos Edwards' head count? to justify he and son-in-law Ritson Morris/Morriss and others being given "leagues" of land by the Spanish in Texas, who'd forbidden permanent slavery?

The second papers would never be shown to those who disapproved of total slavery, just to buyers of slaves. Sayin the indenture was permanent, they were used to prove ownership later, when selling the slaves away from their families.

COMMENT: Incoming Germanics pre-Civil War had watched peasantry and serfdom in action, viewed them negatively, so were opposed to their kissing cousin, slavery. They all violated the "do unto others" rule of the New Testament. Serfdom was another way of making hereditary the condition of "forced labor", whether at gun point, sword point, or with the whip. Like slaves, for hundreds of years, those affected by serfdom were permanently without voting rights, permanently without owning their own cottage and garden, permanently without a legal right to keep savings, permanently without an education of the young so they could read road signs in order to leave, or so they could do clerical work, keep proper books for their own business.

The expansion of slavery into new formed states, such as Missouri, in 1820, meant an increase in slave-selling and transport, opposite of the desired "wind-down" that would have been achieved by freeing slaves in wills, as many wished to do. Any talk of that and more outright freeings was stopped when added 60% legislators helped pro-slavery landowners make any and all freeings illegal. The extra step of making it illegal to teach slaves to read was taken. Missouri had an anti-reading law introduced around 1840. Those men affected were age 20 to 25, when the Civil War began. Once the War began, the ex-enslaved volunteers could rarely read maps and written orders. They could not be put in charge of troops wanting to fight slavery until they learned, which delayed their full participation. Some rebel commanders gave orders to shoot all people of color first, before aiming at anyone else. The black-haired German generals were also targets. The federal's reaction was to give "safer" guard duty to married men and ex-slaves. Despite such precautions, the death rate for soldiers of color was said to be higher than for these on the union side never enslaved.

Those on the confederate side paid a price. His sister, Mrs. Bremer, did not see her spouse return to her, post-War. The sister to whom Edley was closer in a age, Ada Brantley, married someone who died too soon.