Here's a brief summary of how all these lines converged on Keokuk County, Iowa, resulting in my grandfather.
James Morrison (Forrest's grandfather) immigrated from County Down, in northeast Ireland, to Keokuk County, after a brief stop near Rock Island, IL, in the late 1860s. Several of his brothers and sisters also settled in this part of Iowa for a while. James married a daughter of Thomas Morgan.
Thomas Morgan was one of the earliest settlers of Keokuk County, before 1850. This Morgan line traces back to Wales, but were from Scott Co., Indiana, before coming on to Iowa. Thomas' first wife was Polly Ballard. Several other Ballard family members came to Iowa from Jackson Co., Indiana about the same time as Polly and Thomas Morgan. Polly's grandfather Ballard traces back through KY, GA, and NC.
Elisha Scott (Forrest Morrison's great-grandfather) and his wife Ruth Matthews came to Iowa from Indiana in the 1850s. Elisha died relatively soon after coming to Iowa, and Ruth remarried to a Keokuk Co. farmer, James Alkire. Ruth's father TQ Matthews, also brought the rest of his family to Keokuk Co. in the 1850s. Elisha and his father-in-law TQ were both preachers in the Disciples of Christ religion. The Scott family can be traced to very early colonial Virginia and to New Jersey before that. The Matthews family can be traced concretely back to the time of the American Revolution when they were living in eastern Tennessee (then part of western NC).
Different parts of the Gilchrist family came to northern Keokuk Co. in the 1860s through 1870. They came from Dumfriesshire, Scotland (in southwest Scotland, near the English border). About three full generations of the Gilchrists immigrated to the same area and spread from Keokuk County into Iowa County (most notably North English). Assembling and untangling these Gilchrist families turned out to be quite an undertaking, and I think it is one of our best accomplishments. We didn't really have a large core of pre-existing Gilchrist family records to start with, and I believe this is really the first comprehensive family history for this Gilchrist family assembled by anyone. Of course I don't have a 100% complete list of descendents down through today, but it is a pretty good start.
If you're interested in where I learned all this material, you might have fun browsing through my list of sources.
Dennis J. Nicklaus dnicklaus (at) yahoo (dot) com(change the " (at) " to "@" and " (dot) " to ".")