U.S. Data Repository
 -- USGenNet Inc. --

Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page:
<http://www.us-data.org/fineprint.html>

History and Progress of the County of Marion, West Virginia
by George A. Dunnington, Publisher 1880

Pen Sketches of Prominent Citizens
HON. WILLIAM S. MORGAN

The subject of this sketch was born near the present
site of Rivesville, this county, (then Monongalia)
September 7, 1801. He was a son of Stephen Morgan,
whose father, David Morgan, figured prominently in the
early history of the county. He passed most of his life
upon his father's estate, until he arrived at the age
of twenty-one, when he entered the ministry of the
Methodist Church, and was a circuit rider from 1822 to
1827. Mr. Morgan was a self-made man in the strict
sense of the term, being self-educated, with the
exception of the little learning he received at the old
time country schools.

In 1835, he was chosen to represent his district in
Congress and was re-elected in 1837. While a
Representative, he was chairman of the Committee on
Revolutionary Pensions. He did not seek for office and
declined the nomination for a third term, after which
he was appointed a clerk in the House of
Representatives. In 1841, he was sent to the Virginia
Legislature, and secured the passage of the bill
forming Marion county in 1842, and was elected a member
of the Legislature from the new county, the same year.
In 1844, Mr. Morgan was Presidential Elector for this
district upon the Democratic ticket, and in the year
following received an appointment to a clerkship in the
United States Treasury Department, which position he
held until 1861. During the two years following
(1861-3) he was engaged in painting in water colors for
the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington, and produced
numerous illustrations for the works on Oology, by
Prof. S. F. Baird and Mr. Elliott. These illustrations
were pronounced by critics to be the most accurate that
could be procured. He invented and presented to the
Institute a machine used in drawing the outlines of
eggs, which is still in use there.

He was a man of extraordinary endowments, and his
knowledge of the sciences was very accurate. American
natural history and botany were his favorite studies,
and he was one of the best botanists in the country.
Mr. Morgan numbered among his personal friends some of
the most distinguished of American scientists.

After leaving Washington, he lived with his brother-in-
law, Colonel Austin Merrill, at Rivesville, until his
death. While on a visit to his son, in Washington, on
the 3d of September, 1878, he died of malarial fever,
and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, of that
city.

Marion county has produced few such men as William S.
Morgan, for he was, indeed, an extraordinary character,
as his career shows. Possessed of noble, impulses, a
great intellect, and many christian virtues, he was
universally beloved, and died mourned by all who knew
him.