Snapshots / Daniel Rubin

'Whom are you looking for?" asks the friar, deep inside his hooded brown robe, as he unlocks the graveyard of St. John the Evangelist.

"The Empress of Mexico."

The leader of this quest is Dan Morrison, a tall, severe man who has brought his wife and two children and a half-dozen red roses. He does this every weekend when he comes into the city, fresh flowers for a forgotten woman.

Brother James nods and leads his visitors through the snow, down the rows of bone-white marble laid out in the shadow of the Catholic church on South 13th Street, to Vault No. 9, where Ana Maria Huarte de Iturbide rests.

Morrison kneels, brushing the dirt from the stone, and places his offering on the faded markings. As he walks away, he pulls his wife closer, telling her how the Capuchin priests have begun to investigate the life of Madame Iturbide, the only empress buried in Philadelphia -- the whole United States, as far as he can tell.

"It's going to happen now," he says. "That's the beginning of the process."

A grave-site historical marker would be nice, he says. Canonization, if appropriate. A return of the Iturbide line to the throne? Too much.

There have been other causes for Dan Morrison, monarchist.

Thirteen years ago, he was reading a 19th-century travel book about the Mapuche Indians' claim to the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia, more commonly recognized as slices of Chile and Argentina, when historical curiosity took wing. There must be a rightful heir to the throne, he figured, and his journey led him to France, where he found Prince Philippe d'Araucanie living quite comfortably.

After several five-hour meals, Morrison devoted himself -- well, spent a decent amount of effort -- rallying support among other monarchists for the Frenchman's claim. Along the way, Morrison says, he "became a convinced monarchist."

"It's a government that gives a kind of stability that republics don't have," says Morrison, 37, who has completed his doctoral dissertation in philosophy at Duquesne and spends his time writing about forestry for a Center City PR firm.

"I'd much rather live in the Kingdom of Morocco than the Republic of Libya, the Kingdom of Jordan than the Republic of Iraq," he says. "With monarchies, you have the continuity and the connection with the past." Some favorite examples: Canada, England, Denmark.

Over lunch with the family at McGillin's Olde Ale House, he exhumes from his briefcase reams of paper documenting the unfortunate fate of Augustin de Iturbide, 1783-1824.

In a nutshell: Iturbide led the armed forces that fought for Mexican independence when Spanish rule weakened. When no suitable candidate emerged to head the free land, Iturbide was coronated in 1822. He had many rivals. Less than a year later, he was ousted and shipped to Italy with a $25,000 pension. Iturbide and his wife misread popular sentiment and returned the next year. He was swiftly captured, tried and shot, and his wife and children were exiled.

Morrison has no designs on handing Mexican rule over to the descendants of the conservative Catholic emperor. Neither do the Iturbides he has contacted. He's more interested in drawing some attention to the proud widow who left few footprints during her 38 years in Philadelphia. Which is why he can be sighted, along with the wife and kids, passing out leaflets among Mexican mushroom workers of Kennett Square, inviting them to pray at the empress' grave, and repeating her husband's rallying cry: religion, union, independence.

Why the widow chose Philadelphia and how she lived here are not clear to Morrison -- or the church. "It's part of our history that we're just not aware of," says St. John's pastor, the Rev. James Mekhus. They're not even sure why her vault spells the family name "Yturbide." Some sort of spelling reform, Morrison says.

Morrison has collected threads of her life: photographs of her townhouse at 226 S. Broad St., a U.S. Census showing her worth in 1860 as $20,000. A 1913 Evening Bulletin article recalls her arriving as the object "of suspicion as well as of compassion, although pity soon took the place entirely of distrust. In fact her imperial title imparted to her something of the glamour of romance for a while in the eyes of some Philadelphians."

The empress died in 1861 at age 79. Her obituary in the Bulletin notes that no one from her family was able to attend her service -- only "a few gentlemen of Philadelphia, whose social position has brought them into intimate relations with the family in past times."

With the fates of the countries ever more intertwined, Morrison says, it's appropriate to honor "the Martha Washington of Mexico."

He's an arch-looking guy in a pin-striped shirt and woodsy sweater vest, the only hint of mirth coming from his flower-power tie. His face is full, his forehead high. Every so often, his solemn countenance erupts into loud, conspiratorial laughter: Picture Dan Aykroyd playing a college instructor, which Morrison was in Pittsburgh for seven years before moving to the Philadelphia area in 1997.

He lives in Doylestown with his nursery-school-teacher wife, Eva, and children, John Calvin, 4, and Rosie, 6. They play a lot of board games and take a lot of field trips, such as driving to Brooklyn to learn about Moses F. Gale, a brass worker who patented a cigar lighter 126 years ago. Morrison mined Gale's life as his contribution to a club he founded in Pittsburgh called Rascals, Rogues & Rapscallions. Each meeting, a member was challenged to research some bit of unheralded history and return three months later with a full report. Morrison's task was finding something interesting that happened Dec. 6, 1872.

His need to know would have made him a good candidate for Jeopardy! -- so he thought. He tried out. He bombed.

"I didn't know who Celine Dion is."

"Who is she?" his wife asks.

"Apparently, a singer from Canada. I didn't know the gold medalist in swimming, either."

"We don't have a TV," she explains.

© 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.