JUDGE WILLIAM WRIGHT MORRIS 

STEPHEN AND MARY MORRIS 

The following bio was taken from page 318 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission. 

Transcribed by Claudia Schuster 

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Cemeteries of Texas 

    The Morris and Bradford families who settled in Rusk County, Texas, in 1847 are descended from Captain Samuel Macocke and Richard Pace of Pac’e Paines Plantation in Jamestowne, Virginia.  Captain Macocke was killed in March, 1622, during the Indian massacre, but Richard Pace became a hero to the settlers by informing them in the early morning hours of the impending massacre.  This genealogy is documented and related in Adventures of Purse and Person published by the Order of the First Families of Virginia, 1607-1624.  Other facts for this family narrative are taken from Dr. Walter Prescott Webb’s Handbook of Texas, Susan Bradford Eppes’s Through Some Eventful Years, and John Bennet Boddie’s Historical Southern Families and Southside Virginia Families. 

The first Morris to bring this family to Rusk County was William Wright Morris, who was born in Halifax County, North Carolina, in 1805, the son of Judge Aquilla Morris and his wife, Mary Bachellor Morris.  He was educated by private tutors, studied the classical languages, and matriculated at the University of North Carolina at the age of sixteen. 

Like his grandfather, Judge Hezekiah Morris, and his father, Judge Aquilla Morris, William Wright Morris was to become an elected judge in North Carolina where he was closely associated with the illustrious governor John Branch, an in-law by the marriage of his younger brother, Judge Stephen Decator Morris, to Mary Elizabeth Bradford, daughter of the Honorable John and Mary Eelbeck Bradford.  Governor Branch was Mary Bradford Morris’ cousin.  Morris was a friend and political associate of General Lawrence O’Brien Branch, who lost his life during the War Between the States, Dr. Edward Bradford, General Eli B. Whitaker, Bishop Francis Asbury, President John Tyler, and John Paul Jones, the founder of the United States Navy.  He was an intimate friend of the Marquis de Lafayette, who sold much land to the Branches, Morrises, and the Bradfords before they left North Carolina and moved to Leon County, Florida and to Coosa County, Alabama in the 1830’s and 1840’s. 

Judge William Wright Morris never married.  He, his widowed mother, Mary, and other family members, including his younger brother, Judge Stephen Decatur Morris, migrated to Coosa County, Alabama in 1830.  It was in Rockford, Alabama, the Coosa County seat, where the two Morris brothers were admitted to the Alabama Bar.  W.W. Morris was admitted in 1831. 

In 1847 Judge William Wright Morris formed an oxen-drawn wagon train consisting of a young widowed sister, Martha Ann Morris Spivey (widow of the late Dixon Flemon Spivey, Senior), her two small sons and a daughter; his younger brother and sister-in-law, Judge Stephen Decatur and Mary Bradford Morris, and their children – Martha, Virginia, and Mary Eliza; his plantation overseer, Ben Nixon, and the family slaves, making their way from Coosa County, Alabama, to Henderson, Texas partly by covered wagon and partly by boat via New Orleans. 

In a documented biography published in the January, 1947, issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Judge Morris’s reputation and eminence are related: “Immediately, Judge Morris became one of the leading lawyers in the new state, and in 1854 he became a district judge… He served two terms in the Legislature, promoted the first railroad in Texas, practiced law in the courts of his district, and was well known as a contemporary of O.M. Roberts, and “Three-Legged Willie”, distinguished Texans.  Today Morris County bears his name.” 

A short while after his arrival in Henderson, Judge Morris and his brother, Judge Stephen Decatur Morris, acquired large tracts of plantation land and established cotton plantations near Henderson.  Judge W.W. Morris’ plantation was some three miles northwest, where the Henderson Clay Products now stands (1982).  On this plantation in 1849, the judge built for himself, his mother, and his sister, Martha Ann, and her three small children, a splendid Southern mansion.  Since the mother was elderly, Martha became the lady of the “great house,” which was handsomely furnished with lovely mahogany furniture purchased by the judge on trips to New Orleans.  The house was large with four spacious bedrooms and a parlor with fireplaces handsomely embellished.  The kitchen and large dining room were separated from the main house by an open passageway.  A vivid description of the home, written by Mrs. Ned Bradford Morris, Judge Morris’s grandniece follows: “ This ell was divided by a huge fireplace into two rooms, furnished with iron pots and pans for cooking.  The Negro slave, Aunt Ann, who never claimed her freedom after the Civil War, usually cooked her soda and buttermilk biscuits in a Dutch oven with fire coals on the lid.  Such biscuits, served with homemade sausages, lye hominy, and fried apples, or sweet potatoes, sweet butter, and homemade peach preserves made a Sunday morning breakfast a long remembered meal.  When a meal was served, a Negro girl kept the flies off the table with a brush of peacock feathers.  In the spring there was the scent of the blooming locust trees and the red apple trees where the first June apples ripened.” 

Mrs. Morris, nee Minnie Louise Gould, and one of the first women to graduate from the University of Texas in March, 1889, describes the luxurious Victorian parlor:“the old high-ceilinged parlor had a beautiful square Ives and Pond piano; and lessons for Judge Morris’s niece were conducted by Professor Mizner, a pupil of Liszt and a graduate of the Conservator of Music in Leipzig, Germany.  By the folding mahogany game table were several old-fashioned rockers and a long sofa, which were covered with horsehair and ornamented with many carved roses.  In the red brick fireplace were brass andirons, and in front of the fireplace was a pierced brass fender and a brass-handled shovel and tongs.  A fire was always laid, ready to be kindled. 

On the white painted walls hung two large French prints of boys and dogs.  An Aubusson rug of red roses covered the floor, and Nottingham lace curtains were at the small paned windows.  The windows were shaded by outside green slat blinds which were kept closed for fear the sunlight would penetrate enough to fade the parlor carpet.” 

When the present Morris County was created in 1875 from Titus County, the many older legislators and senators who were friends and associates of Judge Morris passed the bill in which W.W. Morris was honored by the county named Morris.  This honor was in respect and deference to the judge’s wise reconstruction legislation and the bills he introduced to promote the first railroads and the clay industry in Texas. 

Not only did Judge W.W. Morris himself secure legislation, land, and money for the first railroads in Texas, but his younger brother, Judge Stephen Decatur Morris, and Judge Stephen’s son-in-law, Dr. Erasmus Manley Hanna, of Henderson lobbied in Austin persuading the legislators to put into law the railroads acts. 

On Judge Morris’s plantation a carriage house adjoined the barns and housed a large barouche with a high seat in front where the Negro driver sat.  This handsome carriage was used to carry the Morrises and Spiveys to call on other first families of Henderson; to carry them to church, and to take the children to their private schools and dancing lessons.  It was also used to transport the Judge to Austin during his terms in Legislature.  It was driven by his Negro valet, Uncle Peter, who also took care of the iron-bound trunk strapped behind in which were kept the Judge’s papers and wardrobe.  Uncle Peter prided himself on taking very good care of the Judge on these trips. 

When the mother, Mary Bachellor Morris, died, she was buried in the rear flower garden of the mansion where several of the Morris slaves had been interred.  The tomb is a raised, mausoleum-type grave of large hand-carved and symmetrically fitted sandstone blocks, covered over and marked by a full-length flat red granite slab.  Her birthdate of 1785 is shown, but no date of death.  The original markings, hand-chiseled by the slaves, have long since been eroded by time and the elements.  The grave was restored in 1977 by Miss Ellen Gould (Nell) Morris of Houston. 

In his latter years, though supposedly retired, the Judge, as he was always called, maintained his office in Henderson, a one-story structure on the east side of the public square.  His two nephews, Judge William Wright Spivey and Judge Ned Bradford Morris, and his niece’s husband, Judge George Henry Gould, practiced law there also. 

It was at this office at the age of seventy-eight, that he was stricken one day and died shortly after reaching home on June 20 1883, only eight years after the naming of Morris County in his honor.  He is buried in the Henderson City Cemetery just west of the present county courthouse.  His grave is marked by a large and beautiful statue of JUSTICE sculpted of Carrara marble in Italy. 

The children of Judge Stephen and Mary Bradford Morris with their spouses are as follows:  (1) Martha--- Simpson Moore; (2) Virginia --- Dr. Erasmus Manley Hanna; (3) Sarah Cromwell – James Newton Hanna; (4) Mary Eliza – Marion Francis Arms . (See later.) (5) James – died young and (6) Judge Ned Bradford Morris – Minnie Louise Gould. (See later.) 

The children of Judge N.B. and Minnie Gould Morris and their spouses are as follows: (1) Marguerite--Alfred Fulbright, both deceased; (2) Ellen Gould and Ned Btradford Morris, twins .  Ned a , prominent Palestine lawyer now deceased, married Willie Belle Neal.  Nell, a retired educator resided in Houston (3) Lawrence Walton, a well known Houston attorney, married Camille Girardy, now deceased; (4) Mildred – George Gary, and (5) Mary Martha, who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Mary Eliza Morris, the fourth child of Mary (Bradford) and Judge S.D. Morris was born in Coosa County, Alabama, September 17, 1849 and died in Fort Worth, Texas, November 19, 1913.  She married Marion Francis Arms, a young Confederate Veteran, In April, 1866.  Marion Arms, the son of William Aaron and Martha Ann (Walker) Arms, was born in New Orleans in 1846.  He migrated to Henderson and enlisted in the Confederate Cavalry as an ambulance driver in the Medical Corps. 

The children of Marion and Mary Morris Arms and their spouses are as follows: (1) Eugenia Virginia Arms, born January 19, 1867, in Rusk County, married Eli Snow Ayres, July 27, 1890, at the Hanna House Hotel owned by her uncle and aunt, Dr. E.M. and Virginia (Morris) Hanna.  The Ayreses were the parents of Mary Katherine Ayres Bugg of Troup, Texas, and grandparents of Willis Lemuel Bugg, IV, and William Bradford Bugg.  Eugenia died February 17, 1962, in Troup, Smith County, Texas, (2) Martha Arms married Robert Martin; (3) Erasmus Arms married Susan Hodges; (4) Honley Arms; married Pearl (?); (5) William Spivey Arms, Sr., born March 8, 1882, married on June 15, 1907 Robbie Wallis, daughter of Dr. D.R. Wallis, a prominent Rockdale, Texas, physician. (6) Jimmie married (First) Joseph Sartain, (Second) Harry Fuller, Sr.; (7) Lillian Belle married Zachery Fuller; (8) Ella Mae married (First) Charles Smith; (Second) Omar Steele, Sr.; and (9) Mary Arms married Render Farley and resides in Houston with her daughter, Mrs. James A. Lomax. 

Submitted by William B. Bugg