James Morris III

James Morris III ( – ) was a Continental Army officer from Connecticut during the American Revolutionary War and founder of the Morris Academy, a pioneer in coeducation.

Born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, James Morris spent his early life hoping and training to be a minister. However, after graduating from Yale College, Morris accepted a commission of First Lieutenant from the Continental Army and joined the fight for American Independence. Morris was captured during the Battle of Germantown and spent most of the remaining war in captivity. Upon his release, Morris was promoted to the rank of Captain and supported Alexander Hamilton in the Siege of Yorktown. When he returned from the war, Morris began and ran an academy that trained both boys and girls together, a rarity at the time.

James Morris died in 1820. The South Farms section of the town of Litchfield, where he was born, was incorporated as a separate entity in 1859 and re-named Morris in his honor.

Early life and education James Morris was born on January 19, 1752, on his father's farm in Morris (then South Farms) in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Shortly after his birth, he was baptized by the pastor Dr. Joseph Bellamy in Bethlehem's old meeting house. He was the eldest child of Deacon James and Phebe Morris (née Barnes) and had a younger sister, Lucy, who was born two years after his birth. His parents were both deeply religious, which was typical of New England farmers at the time. His father, who was described as a "devout man," served as a deacon for the church.

Morris was the third James in his line, following his father and grandfather, who were also called James. Morris's paternal great-great-grandfather, Thomas Morris, was an English shipbuilder who immigrated to Quinnipiac (now New Haven), hoping to continue his trade in the New World. He arrived in Boston aboard the ship Hector in 1637, and later purchased a tract of land on what is now known as Morris Cove, due to its timber and fertile soil. He remained there until his death in 1673. The earliest evidence of the Morris family in South Farms comes from a 1734 land purchase, when John Morris, of East Haven, bought land from John Bird at the south end of Bantam Lake. James Morris, Jr., (1722–1789), Morris's father, received most of his land from his uncle, John, on his death in 1744. Soon after this grant, James, Jr., built one of the first houses on the property. His home was located to the west of an old highway that ran through land now owned by Camp Columbia. In 1751, he married Phebe Barnes, the daughter of Thomas Barnes, at the First Congregational Church in Litchfield.

When Morris was nine, his father built a new, much larger home just north of his birthplace, with a design that young Morris should live in half of it. As the only son, his father couldn’t bear the idea of him leaving home for a formal education, envisioning Morris as “his earthly prop on which he might lean in old age.” An idea Morris himself found unbearable. Through these studies, Morris hoped to eventually become a minister. He was put under the tutelage of Thomas Miner, a divinity student of Bellamy's, and continued with his studies until the spring of 1770. He spent the season studying under the South Farms minister Dr. Salmon Hurlburt, but made little progress, as his efforts were constantly disrupted by household chores. That fall, Morris relocated to Judea to study under Rev. Daniel Brinsmade, where he found yet another instructor in Mr. Nathan Hale (1742–1813), saying of him, "Mr. Hale was an accurate scholar and an able instructor."

The War

Commission and early service

Morris's tenure as an instructor in Litchfield was cut short when, within months of arriving, he received an unsolicited ensign's commission in the Connecticut militia, which he accepted. While in the service of the Connecticut militia Morris saw his first action, fighting battles in both Long Island and White Plains. In his memoirs, Morris wrote of this time, stating that "The soldiers universally manifested a great respect for me, for my care of the sick and my attention to their wants, and for my sympathies in their distresses."

Despite his meager accommodations, Morris decided to make the best of his imprisonment in Philadelphia by negotiating with his jailors to borrow books from the so-called circulating library recently established by Benjamin Franklin in that city. One historian points to this time as when Morris was exposed to the philosophers that would be so influential in his later life as an educator: "From Milton, James Morris absorbed ideas in favor of healthy exercises to develop both body and mind at the same time; from Rollin, the danger of following custom blindly rather than reason; and from Locke, the novel idea that the English language was as important as Latin and Greek." In his memoir, Morris noted that Clarkson was "a man of science and large property... who owned the most extensive private library that [Morris] had ever known in the United States." In the summer of 1782 Morris briefly returned to service, but was ultimately released from service in November of that year.

In the following years James and Elizabeth had five children:

Abigail Morris (b. 8/2/1783) Reuben Smith Morris (b. 5/24/1786): 1804 Yale graduate, attorney in Cayuga, New York. During his illness, a man named Gad Farnam moved into the Morris's home to care for him day and night. The two families became very close and Gad's daughter Rhoda, only five years old at the time of the illness, later became Morris's second wife. It was at this point in Morris's life that he accepted that he would never realize his early dream of becoming a minister. Morris welcomed all of these students, both male and female.

By the turn of the century, Morris found it necessary to formalize his instruction and construct a proper Academy building. The estimated cost was $1200, so Morris enlisted wealthy residents of Litchfield and South Farms. For the period from 1803 to 1812, the Morris Academy grew to an average of 50-75 students.

The abolitionist John Brown, born in 1800, studied at the Morris Academy, although the exact dates are not known.

The Academy was handed to several other heads of school, until, on April 12, 1888, the Morris Academy was closed for good.

In the introduction to her book on the academy, Barbara Nolen Strong noted:

The Morris Academy is entitled to be called a pioneer institution because of its 'open door' policy in coeducation. It was not the first in the United States, not even in Connecticut, but none of the other early academies opened their doors as wide and kept them open as long. No other coeducational academy spread its influence so far.

Later life In September 1814 Morris's wife Elizabeth died.

Jane Elizabeth Morris (b. 1/30/1816)

Toward the end of his life, Morris compiled his memoirs, which were subsequently published as Memoirs of James Morris of South Farms In Litchfield.

Death Morris left his home on April 17, 1820, to attend the foreign missionary school at Cornwall. Around 10 p.m. that same day, he began to feel ill. Hoping to return home before he died, he left Cornwall two days later on April 19. After riding six miles he became weak and realized that he could not go any further. He stopped at the home of his friend, Deacon Augustus Thompson in Goshen. There, he died at about 8 a.m. on April 20, 1820, at the age of sixty-eight years and three months. His interment was held on Friday, April 21, in the East Morris Cemetery, and Rev. Joseph Harvey, of Goshen, delivered a sermon from Hebrews 6:12.

The foundation of The Morris Academy remains intact on the grounds of James Morris Elementary School, in Morris.