Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/493

 MORRIS

MORRIS

risania. He died in 1673. Lewis Morris married Isabf 11a Graham. He practised law in New York city, was judge of the superior court of New York and New Jersey in 1692, and became a member of the governor's council and of the state assembly, in which body he opposed Governor Cornbury, drew up the complaint against him and presented it in person to Queen Anne. He was chief justice of New York and New Jersey, 1710-1738, gover- nor's councillor, 1710-38, acting governor in 1731 and governor of New Jersey, 1738-46, having ef- fected the separation of New Jersey and New York, 1738. He died in Kingsbury, N.J., May 21, 1746.

MORRIS, Lewis, signer, was born in Morris- ania, N.Y., April 8, 1726; son of Judge Lewis (1698-1762) and Catharine (Staats) Morris ; grand- son of Lewis (1071-1746) and Isabella (Graham) Morris, and great-grandson of Capt. Richard and Sarah (Cole) Morris. His father, chief justice

of the vice admiralty court, married first Catharine Staats, and secondly, in 1747, Sarah Gouverneur. The son entered Yale in the class of 1746, and received the de- grees of A.B. and A. M. in 1790. He was married to Mary Wal- ton and had six sons and four daughters. His sons, Col. Lewis Morris, U.S.A., and Capt. Richard Valen- tine Morris, U.S.N. , served in the Revolutionary war. He devoted himself to the management of his large estate and became a successful farmer. He was op- posed to the aggressive measures of the British parliament and protested against the quar- tering of British troops on the American colo- nists. Immediately after the battle of Lex- ington in 1775 he was chosen a delegate to the Continental congress, taking his seat May 15, 1775. He served on the committee to provide ammuni- tion and supplies for the American army of which Washington was chairman. He was at Fort Pitt the latter part of 1775, where he nego- tiated with the Indians to induce them to make common cause with the colonists against the British. Early in 1776 he returned to Philadel- phia and was appointed on several important committees and signed the Declaration of Inde- pendence of July 4, 1776. He returned to New York in 1777, having resigned his seat in congress in favor of his half-brother Governeur in order that he might bring his personal influence to boar upon the citizens of New York to sustain

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the cause of independence, showing them that he was himself a willing sufferer, his property having been destroyed and his own family exiled from the state. From 1777 till the evacuation of New York in 1783, he and his family were often in actual want. Upon resigning his seat in con- gress, that body passed a resolution compliment- ing him on his " long and faithful services." He was subsequently a member of the state assembly and major-general of state militia. Upon the evacuation of New York he returned to his deso- lated farm at Morrisania and engaged in re-estab- lishing his possessions. He died at Morrisania, N.Y., Jan. 22, 1798.

MORRIS, Lewis R., representative, was born in New York city, Nov. 2, 1760. He secured a grant of land at Springfield, Vt ., which was settled under a charter from New York, and removed to that place in 1786. He became prom- inent in business affairs ; was a member of the convention meeting in Bennington, Vt., to ratify the Federal constitution, and was one of the commissioners to congress that completed the ne- gotiation for the admission of Vermont into the union in 1791. He was a representative in the general assembly in 1795-96, 1803-08 ; was secre- tary of the constitutional convention held in Windsor in 1793 ; a Federalist representative in the 5th, 6th, and 7th congresses, 1797-1803, and during the long controversy over the presidential election of 1800, absented himself on the thirty- sixth ballot, thus allowing Matthew Lyon (q. v.) to cast the vote of the state for Jefferson. He was twice married, first to a daughter of the Rev. Buckley Olcott of Charleston, N. H., and secondly to Ellen, daughter of Gen. Arad Hunt of Vernon, Vt. He died in Springfield, Vt., Dec. 29, 1825.

MORRIS, Luzon Burritt, governor of Connec- ticut, was born in Newtown, Conn., April 16, 1827 ; son of Eli Gould and Lydia (Bennett) Morris^ and grandson of Daniel and Elizabeth (Burritt) Morris. He was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1854, A.M., 1858, paying his expenses through college by working in a blacksmith shop at Roxbury and in an edged tool factory at Seymour. He was a representative in tlie state legislature, 1855-56. He removed to New Haven, was admitted to the bar ; was again a representative in the state legislature in 1870, 1876, and 1880, and state senator, 1874-76, serving as president of the senate. He was probate judge of the New Haven district, 1857-63, and was chairman of the com- mission to revise the probate laws of Connecticut. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor of the state in 1888 and again in 1890, receiving a plurality of the votes cast in