On January 30, 1912, in Atlanta, Ted Morris married Callie Carson. The couple traveled throughout the Southeast, with Mr. Morris working at several automobile dealerships making from $350 to $500 a month, pretty good money for those days.
Ted and Callie had a daughter, Dolores, a few years after they married and the couple soon settled down in Madisonville, Tennessee, where Ted got a job as a mechanic and car salesman at the Knoxville REO Company dealership.
All was good for the Morrises.
Until 1933, when L. C. Allen and Roscoe Allen came to town looking for Mr. Morris.
It turns out that a few days before the Allens came to Knoxville Ted and his wife had spent time at the LeConte hotel. While there he suddenly remembered that he wasn’t really Ted Morris, but was actually a man named Edgar Allen, from Ridgewood, New Jersey, and that he had a wife and son there. Yes, folks, Ted Morris was a victim of amnesia.
L. C. Allen was Ted’s long-lost brother and Roscoe was his son, who he hadn’t seen in 30 years. He contacted them and they made arrangements to come to Knoxville immediately to see if Ted was indeed the long-lost Edgar Allen.
This meeting was arranged by the Morrises’ attorney and was held in the Knoxville police station. Immediately upon seeing his brother, Ted, or Edgar, take your pick, recognized him, all those memories suddenly flooding in on him. The two spoke of people in New Jersey and he easily identified pictures of places in Ridgewood he had known. He didn’t, of course, recognize his son because the 36-year-old had changed so much since he last saw him, when he was a little boy.
Odd thing was, as soon as Ted/Edgar met his brother and his son, he instantly forgot his current wife and daughter. When Mrs. Morris asked him a question or his daughter went to hug him, he simply stared at them blankly, apparently not recognizing them at all.
It was agreed at that meeting that Ted/Edgar would be sent back to Ridgewood and be placed in a sanitarium for rest and mental observation. Then he would be allowed to choose which life he wished to live. Regular reports on his condition were to be given to the family in Tennessee.
In the end Ted/Edgar divorced his wife in New Jersey and re-married Callie, this time as Edgar Allen.
