This tragic item on the front page of the May 19, 1925 Charlottetown Guardian left me wanting to know more about Roma Theresa Morgan. I’ve pieced together a bit of a history from a couple of census records and a baptism record for Theresa or Teresa, born May 10, 1894 probably near Fort Augustus, PEI, where she was baptized on May 27, 1894 at St. Patrick’s church, to John Morgan (born in Ireland around 1839) and Mary (Monaghan) Morgan (born Ireland August 10, 1854).

By the 1911 Census, John was dead and Mary and Theresa were living with a border at 58 Queen Street, Charlottetown. By 1931, Mary was living with her oldest child, Joseph, who was single and a farmer in Watervale, PEI.

Dear Theresa would have just turned 29 around the time of her death in faraway Brooklyn. How did a PEI girl get to New York 100 years ago and become a magazine cover model? Did Theresa send money back to her family, along with copies of the magazine covers? What must they have thought of her new life?

Charlottetown Girl Takes Poison by Mistake

(Special to the Guardian) NEW YORK, May 18 - Three years ago pretty Roma Theresa Morgan, whose mother and sister live at 58 Queen Street, Charlottetown, P. E. I., came to New York, to win fame and fortune. Today she is on her way back home in a casket, the victim of poison taken by accident.

Roma posed for several of the greatest magazine cover artists in America but a few months ago was obliged to cease working because of poor health. The other evening her landlady Mrs. Elsie Ilse, who maintained a furnished rooming house over in Brooklyn found the girl writhing on the floor of her room. She was rushed to a hospital but all efforts to save her life were in vain. The police say the girl mistook a bottle of poison for rheumatism medicine.

No notes were found which would indicate suicide and other roomers in the house knew her as a cheerful friendly person.