My Genealogy Hound

HON. LORENZO MORRIS, a prominent lawyer of Fredonia and an ex-State senator of New York, was born in Madison county, New York, August 14, 1817, and is a son of David and Abigail (Blodgett) Morris. David Morris and his wife were both natives of New England, and settled in the town of Chautauqua, this county, in 1829. After some years they removed to Sherman, where Mr. Morris died in 1868, aged seventy-seven years. His wife passed away in 1873, at eighty years of age.

Lorenzo Morris attended the common schools, then entered the old Mayville academy, from which he was graduated in 1836, and was afterwards engaged in teaching for a few years. In 1837 he turned his attention to the study of law, and read for two years with Hon. Thomas A. Osborne, one of the five judges of which the court of common pleas of Chautauqua county then consisted. In 1840 he went to Jamestown where he read for one year with Judge Cooke, and after being admitted to practice in the court of common pleas became a partner of his preceptor. The law then required seven years of practice as a requisite for admission as an attorney before the supreme court of the State, but made a reduction of time in favor of those who had pursued classical studies, and Mr. Morris having a certificate of a classical course of reading, was admitted as an attorney of the supreme court in 1844, at the end of only three years practice in the lower courts. In the same year he removed to Mayville and practiced until 1852, when he came to Fredonia where he has been in active and successful practice ever since. In 1838 he was commissioned by Gov. William H. Seward as lieutenant-colonel of the 207th regiment, N. Y. militia, in which he had served as adjutant. He was elected colonel during the next year and commanded the regiment until 1842, when he resigned.

On October 5, 1843, he married Fannie E. Strong, daughter of Walter Strong, an early settler and prominent citizen of the town of Westfield. She died June 2, 1873, and left three children: Mrs. Ellen M. Russel, Mrs. S. H. Albro, and Walter D. Morris, cashier of the Citizens Bank of Watertown, South Dakota. On May 28, 1885, he united in marriage with Mrs. Marian H. (Hovey) Stillman, of Fredonia. In politics Senator Morris is an old-time democrat who is opposed to measures antagonistic to the principles of Jefferson and Jackson. He was appointed in 1871 as one of the trustees of the asylum for the insane at Buffalo, which position he resigned in 1875. His political career commenced in 1867, when he was nominated by his party as their candidate for State senator in the twenty-sixth district, composed of the counties of Cattaraugus and Chautauqua. Although the district was largely republican, yet he was elected by two hundred and three majority over his two republican competitors, and served creditably in the State Senate during its session of 1868-69. In 1872 he was a member of the convention which met that year in Albany to revise the State constitution. Senator Morris has always taken great interest in the common schools and all general matters of public improvement. While serving in the State Senate he procured the abolition of the local board of managers of the Fredonia Normal school, the school having closed for want of harmony, and placed the school under the control of the State superintendent until 1873, when he was made president of a new board of trustees which has been harmonious and the school prosperous, and is now justly recognized as one of the best of the normal schools in the State.