Harcourt Morgan

Early life Morgan was born in 1867 and raised by his parents Rebecca (née Truman) and John Morgan on a farm near Kerwood in Adelaide Township, Ontario.

At LSU, Morgan studied two parasitical insects, the cattle tick and the cotton boll weevil, both of which had proven destructive to farmers in the state. Camping out in pastures and cotton fields, Morgan collected invaluable data on the habits of both insects that finally enabled scientists to get their populations under control. Morgan's role in fighting the cattle tick and boll weevil infestations endeared him to many of the state's farmers and gained the respect of regional agricultural experts.

Marriage and family After getting established in teaching and research, Morgan married Sara Elizabeth Fay. Morgan believed that the South's overemphasis on commodity row crops such as cotton and tobacco, which were harmful to the soil, threw this relationship out of balance. He held numerous demonstrations and exhibits that encouraged area farmers to practice crop rotation, replace row crops with soil-enriching grasses, clovers, and legumes, avoid planting corn on hill slopes (a practice in which many East Tennessee mountain farmers were adept), and improve eroded pastures with lime and phosphate. The dismissal of eccentric law professor John R. Neal sparked an outcry among law school alumni, and Morgan was forced to defend the university's actions before Governor Peay and the Board of Trustees. When the state passed the Butler Act barring the teaching of the theory of evolution in 1925, many of the state's university leaders opposed the bill and looked to Morgan and U.T. for leadership. In spite of reservations about the law, however, Morgan did not speak out about the issue. In TVA's early years, he would provide a critical connection between the agency and the often suspicious local population.

After Arthur Morgan's removal, Harcourt Morgan was appointed as chairman. Preferring to focus on his agricultural initiatives, he delegated most of his chairmanship duties to Lilienthal.

Morgan served as chairman until 1941, and remained on the board as a director until 1948. Lilienthal later wrote that he and Harcourt Morgan's personalities complemented one another, stating that Morgan was instrumental in getting the conservative local population to accept the agency's progressive initiatives, while Lilienthal in turn dealt with many of the agency's critics in Washington. Morgan was unimpressed with his colleague's book about the TVA, Democracy on the March, concluding that Lilienthal apparently never understood his "common mooring" philosophy.

Death and legacy After retiring from TVA, Morgan, then in his 80s, continued to tour the state and lecture on his common mooring philosophy. He died on August 25, 1950, and is buried in Knoxville's Greenwood Cemetery.

Morgan was awarded an honorary doctorate from Emory and Henry College. The Progressive Farmer named him "Man of the Year" in 1940. Morgan Hall, the main building of the University of Tennessee's College of Agriculture, is named for him.