Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/527

522 MORRIS, Miss Ellen Douglas, temperance worker, born in Petersburg, Ill, 9th March, 1846. Her father was a Kentuckian, a descendant of the Virginia families, Deakins and Morris. Her mother

was of German descent from Wagoner and Wurtzbaugh. Mr. Morris was an intimate personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. He received an offer of a position under the great martyr's administration, but declined. He early espoused the cause of the oppressed and was always interested in public welfare. Miss Morris was educated in a seminary for girls under direction of the Presbyterian Church of Petersburg. She afterwards attended the public schools and was finally graduated from Rockford Seminary, Ill. From 1872 to 1885 she taught in the public schools of Illinois and Missouri, but left the school-room for work in the wider educational field of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In Savannah, Mo., where she attended the fourth district convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the local union was dying because it had no leader. She had attended that convention to look on. Reared according to the straightest sect of the Presbyterians, she never dreamed of opening her mouth in the church. The State president believed she saw a latent power and reserve force in the quiet looker-on, and said to the local union, "Make that woman your president." After great entreaty on their part, and great quaking on hers, that was done. The next year saw her president of the district, which she quickly made the banner district of the State. When a State secretary was needed. Miss Morris was almost unanimously chosen and installed at headquarters. Her success in every position she held may be attributed to the careful attention she gives to details and the exact faithfulness of her service. She makes her home in Kansas City. Mo.

MORRIS, Mrs. Esther, justice, born in Spencer, Wyoming county, N. Y., in 1813. She comes of a long line of English ancestry. Her early years were spent amid the struggles of pioneer life following the Revolution. Daniel McQuigg, her grandfather, fought on the side of the American colonies and afterwards served as a captain under General Sullivan in the expedition that drove the Indians out of western New York. Under his commission her father was entitled to a farm, which he located near Owego, N. Y., and was one of the first twelve settlers of Tioga county.

Esther's efforts to better the condition of women arose from no sudden conversion. Left an orphan at eleven years of age, she was early thrown upon her own resources. For a number of years she carried on successfully a millinery business in Owego. Before her marriage, at the age of twenty-eight, she had acquired a competence. She became the wife of At tennis Slack, a civil engineer by profession, and at that time engaged in the construction of the Erie Railroad. He died several years thereafter, leaving his wife a large tract of land in Illinois, where he had been engaged as a chief engineer in building the Illinois Central Railroad. With an infant in her arms, she removed to the West. During the settlement of that estate she fully realized the injustice of the property laws in their relation to women. In the long conflict with slavery she was an early and earnest worker. In 1845 she became the wife of John Morris, a merchant of Peru, Ill., and for more than twenty years resided in that place, rearing her family and being an earnest helper in the church, schools and other good works. In 1869 she joined her husband and three sons in South Pass, Wyoming, and there she administered justice in a little court that became famous throughout the world. During her term of office, which covered a period of one year, Judge Morris tried about fifty cases, and no decision of hers was ever reversed by a higher court on appeal. She became a widow in 1876. since which time she has resided in Wyoming,