John Morris Jr. (107)

John Morris, Jr. (15 June 1739–5 March 1785) was a lawyer, political officeholder, and military officer, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society. Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia, he attended the Academy of Philadelphia and the College of Philadelphia, graduating from the latter in 1759. His father, Samuel Morris, hoped John would study law in London but he instead read law in Philadelphia, receiving admittance to the bar in 1760. Morris devoted himself to the patriot cause early on in the colonies’ dispute with Great Britain. He was disowned by the Friends Meeting in 1775 for taking an interest in military training. Thereafter, he held a series of political offices, including secretary of Pennsylvania’s state constitutional convention (1776), justice of the peace for Philadelphia (1776), Recorder of Deeds and Master of the Rolls (1777), and clerk of the General Assembly (1778). In the fall of 1776 he had also been appointed quartermaster, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, of the state militia. After Pennsylvania attorney general (and APS member) Andrew Allen defected to the British side, the Pennsylvania Council authorized Morris to serve as acting attorney general. He took an active role in the APS, especially following the 1779 resumption of its meetings, and ensured that copies of official publications related to the War of Independence found their way into the hands of the antiquarian Pierre Eugène Du Simitière—who, like Morris’s uncle Thomas Cadwalader, was a fellow APS member. (PI)