On November 23rd, 1892, Katie Logan, a domestic servant for the Grant family of No. 917 South Hill Street in Los Angeles, left for San Diego to get some papers signed. She left in good spirits and promised her employer that she would return in time to cook Thanksgiving dinner. When she failed to return as promised, contractor L.A. Grant contacted the police to report her missing. He considered Ms. Logan the best servant in his house. It was reported that she had an excellent reputation in the city, attended strictly to her duties and never went out at night. Ms. Logan did not talk to the other servants about her past life to any great extent.
Sadly, the horrible truth regarding the whereabouts of Ms. Logan became known on December 8th when the police opened her personal trunk left behind at the Grant residence. The contents revealed a woman who strongly desired to keep her true identity a secret. Various photographs (including one of Ms. Logan) and papers were destroyed in such a way to remove any identifying names, dates and addresses. However, detectives did find one undamaged item. An 1885 Hamburg, Iowa marriage certificate between a Thomas E. Morgan and Kate E. Farmer. Based on the contents of the trunk and Mr. Grant’s knowledge of the missing woman, it was quickly determined that Ms. Katie Logan fit the description of a mysterious suicide that had just occurred at the Hotel del Coronado. The Los Angeles chief of police notified San Diego’s chief of police of the connection.
Photograph of Kate Morgan taken circa 1886
On Thanksgiving Day 1892, Kate Morgan checked herself into the newly built Hotel del Coronado (the large wooden beach resort had only been completed a mere four years earlier in February of 1888) under the alias “Lottie A Bernard” from Detroit. She was traveling alone without any luggage and quickly drew the attention of the hotel workers there.
A description of Kate’s odd behavior is contained within the Coroner’s Report inquest testimony of T.J. Fisher, a real estate agent whose place of business was in the hotel drug store:
“I saw the lady first about last Saturday, when she came into the drug store and walked up and down the floor two or three times; she seemed to be suffering. She asked me if I could get her something to relieve her suffering, and I referred her to Mr. Fosdick, the manager of the store, and Mr. Fosdick advised her to see a physician. She said that her brother was a physician, and that she expected him here. That was the last I saw of her until Monday. On Monday afternoon she came in again, and walked up and down the floor, and looked as though she was still suffering. I said, “It seems too bad for you to go over in town and you suffering from neuralgia in this stormy weather.” She said, “I am compelled to go. I forgot my checks, and I have got to go over and identify my trunks, personally.” She went out, and that was the last I saw of her until I saw her dead, lying on the steps.”
On November 29, 1892, San Diego’s The Daily Bee was the first newspaper to report on her death.
BLEW OUT HER BRAINS. SUICIDE OF A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN AT SAN DIEGO Disappointed Over Not Receiving Money. After Her Death Word Came That She Could Draw All She Desired - She Was Well Dressed and Had a Good Sum in Her Purse
Between the thunderous turf on the gray sea and the brilliancy and music of a gay throng in the great parlor and long halls of the Hotel del Coronado, a woman stood alone and desperate. From her position on the stone stairs at the west end of the ocean terrace leading to the beach, the surf wrapped and re-wrapped her with its spray, and the pitiless rain fell upon her bared head and young white face.
Whatever it may have been, fear or courage at the final moment, there is no one to say. All that is known of the stranger is that she arrived with no luggage but a hand satchel on the 24th and gave her name as a Mrs. L. Anderson Bernard, of Detroit. She remained in her room generally and seemed to suffer intensely.
While the newspapers speculated that her despondency and suicide may have been the result of a pregnancy and subsequent desertion, the police were determined to identify the woman everyone was now calling “The Beautiful Stranger.” A telegraph of her description was sent to police agencies around the country.
On Sunday, December 4, 1892, the San Diego Union was reporting that the Coronado suicide was identified as Miss Lizzie Wyllie of Detroit, who had left home five weeks earlier with a married man. The descriptions of the two women matched so well that Mrs. Elizabeth Wyllie, Lizzie’s mother, began making preparations with friends in Pasadena to go down and take care of her remains. By December 9, 1892 it was reported that Lizzie Wyllie was alive and living in Ontario Canada and her name quickly left the newspaper headlines. With the opening of Katie Logan’s a.k.a. Kate Morgan’s trunk at the Grant residence, a positive identification was made.
In August of 2014 I wrote an article for the Ontario Genealogical Society's quarterly journal Families titled "How a Toronto Bookbindery Girl Named Lizzie Wyllie Became a National News Headline in 1892." This article covers the suicide of Kate Morgan at the Hotel del Coronado and the confusion that arose in the newspapers over her true identity. Although she was later positively identified as Kate Morgan from Hamburg, Iowa, modern day authors continue to bring up the name of Lizzie Wyllie. In my article, which you can view here, I believe I firmly close the case as to the identity of the woman buried in Kate Morgan's plot at Mount Hope Cemetery.
Room 3327 at the Hotel del Coronado. This is the room (then numbered Room 302) where hotel guest Kate Morgan resided in November 1892 when she took her own life. It has been the continual haunting of this room and other parts of the hotel that has kept her story afloat. Even her grave would be unmarked if not for persistent sightings of her over the years.
Lot 28, Row 6, Section 1, Division 5. This is the location for the gravesite of Kate Morgan at the historic Mount Hope Cemetery in the city of San Diego. An unassuming in-the-ground marker sits atop her grave with the words “KATE MORGAN ALSO KNOWN AS LOTTIE A. BERNARD DIED NOV. 29, 1892 AT AGE 24 YEARS”. The marker itself was purchased for $800 by the late Alan M. May in 1989. After researching and writing a book on the ghostly legend of Kate Morgan, he was disturbed that her place of burial was left unmarked for 97 years. Along with the inscribed headstone, he also purchased and placed there a statue of an angel which was stolen by vandals sometime after 2002. A small vase in May’s memory has also vanished from the gravesite. The base pedestal of each can still be seen at the site.
This blog post was written by Richard Deuel, founder of San Diego Ghost Tech adapted from an earlier version he posted on October 17, 2016 on his site San Diego Gravesite Custodial.