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 to Deacon James Morris Jr. and Phebe Barnes Morris in South Farms, Connecticut, which was then part of Litchfield town, on January 19, 1752.
Even as a young man, Morris displayed a disposition for education, borrowing often from the library in nearby Bethlehem, where his father was a member. Through these studies, Morris hoped to eventually become a minister. When Morris was eighteen, his father sent him to live full-time in Bethlehem and study under Dr. Joseph Bellamy. Morris continued with Bellamy until the spring of 1770, when he spent the season studying under the South Farms minister Dr. Salmon Hurlburt. That fall Morris found yet another instructor in Mr. Nathan Hale, saying of him, "Mr. Hale was an accurate scholar and an able instructor."
In September 1771, Morris began more formal studies at Yale College. For his tutor at Yale, Morris was assigned future Yale president Timothy Dwight IV, who would be an influential force in coeducation in his own right. Morris was awarded his degree in July, 1775, noting in his memoirs, "having had my share of honorary appointments."
Upon graduation Morris returned to South Farms, where he helped his father with the harvest and took a post teaching grammar school in nearby Litchfield, where he received his first opportunity to teach and was paid "'handsome wages' hoping to reimburse his father for the heavy expenses of his college education."
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."
In late December 1776, Morris completed his commitment to the Connecticut militia and immediately accepted a commission in the Continental Army as a first lieutenant. After serving as a recruiting officer in Litchfield, Morris joined General George Washington and the army at Peekskill. On October 3, 1776, General Washington commanded this army in the Battle of Germantown. The American forces were ultimately unsuccessful in this battle and Morris was taken as a prisoner of war on October 4, 1776.
Captivity
The early part of Morris's confinement were the most trying. He was taken to the "New Jail" in Philadelphia where he "was locked in a cold room ... destitute of everything by cold stone walls and bare floors—no kind of a seat to sit on—all total darkness, no water to drink or a morsel to eat; without a blanket to cover [him]."
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."