Lewis Morris
Born: April 8, 1726
Died: January 22, 1798
Colony/State: New York
Occupation / Public Role: Landowner, legislator, judge, military officer
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War militia leader, and later a member of the New York state senate.
Lewis Morris was born at Morrisania in what is now part of the Bronx, New York, into the prominent Morris family. The U.S. House notes that he was educated by private tutors, graduated from Yale College in 1746, and then devoted himself largely to agricultural pursuits on the family estate. He came from the landed aristocracy of colonial New York, but by the 1770s he had firmly aligned himself with the Revolutionary cause.
Before independence, Morris entered public life in New York. According to the U.S. House, he was appointed by the Crown as a judge of the Court of Admiralty in 1760, though he resigned that office in 1774 as imperial tensions deepened. He also served in the colony’s political institutions and was a delegate to the provincial convention of New York in 1775.
Morris served in the Second Continental Congress from 1775 to 1777 and signed the Declaration of Independence as one of New York’s four signers. Britannica’s student reference also notes that he later became a brigadier general in charge of the Westchester County militia and served in that role through the Revolutionary War. He was one of those signers who backed independence both politically and militarily, which tends to make the signature on the parchment feel a little less ornamental.
After independence, Morris remained active in New York public life. The U.S. House records that he served as a county judge of Westchester County in 1777, sat on the committee on detection of conspiracies, served in the New York state senate from 1777 to 1781 and again from 1784 to 1788, and was a member of the state convention that adopted the Federal Constitution in 1788. He also served on the first board of regents of the University of New York.
Lewis Morris died at Morrisania in 1798. He is not as famous today as Jefferson, Adams, or Franklin, but he was a major New York Revolutionary figure: signer, militia leader, state senator, judge, and constitutional ratifier. That is a stout résumé for a man most people now remember only as “wait, which Morris was that again?”
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
- William Floyd
- Francis Lewis
- Philip Livingston