Morril, David Lawrence, , New Hampshire 1772 1849 Male Clergyman Congregational Governor (State) Physician Senator clergyman, physician, United States senator, and governor of New Hampshire, was born at Epping, N. H. , where his father, Samuel Morril, a Harvard graduate and a Congregational minister, had settled and married Anna, daughter of David Lawrence.
He studied with his paternal grandfather, Isaac Morril, a Congregational minister at Wilmington, Massachussets, and went to Exeter Academy.
Seven years later, as the result of a religious experience, he commenced to study for the ministry under the Rev. Jesse Remington, of Candia, and in 1802 he became pastor of a church at Goffstown, formed by a union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists.
Owing partly to ill-health and partly to difficulties in the church, Morril ended his active ministry in November 1809, and his relations with the parish were formally severed in July 1811.
During his years as a minister he had not entirely given up medicine.
He spoke eloquently, if somewhat sentimentally, in favor of pensions for Revolutionary officers, opposed reimbursing Matthew Lyon for the fine exacted under the Sedition Act, and moved to dismiss from the army and navy, officers who had engaged in dueling.
The next year he was nominated again for governor by the "Adams men, " or "old guard" of the Democratic-Republicans, in opposition to the incumbent, Levi Woodbury, who had been elected the preceding year by the "insurgents. "
Neither candidate received a majority of votes cast, but Morril, having a plurality of more than 3, 000, was chosen by the legislature.
His reëlection the following year was practically unanimous, 30, 167 votes being cast for him out of a total of 30, 770.
In 1825 he had the honor of receiving Lafayette when the latter visited Concord.
The following year he was elected governor for a third time, at the expiration of which tenure he retired to private life.
He seems to have spent his last years in comparative leisure and retirement.
[See Nathaniel Bouton, Hist.
of Concord (1856); E. S. Stackpole, Hist.
of N. H. (1916), vol.
III; G. P. Hadley, Hist.
of the Town of Goffstown, 1733-1920 (2 vols. , 1922 - 24); and A. M. Smith, Morrill Kindred in America (2 vols. , 1914 - 31).
Hadley reproduces a portrait of Morril which is in the State House at Concord.
The New-Eng.
Hist.
and Geneal.
There is a brief account of him in the Biog.
Dir.
Am.
Cong.
(1928) and in N. F. Carter, The Native Ministry of N. H. (1906). ]
He served as a vice-president of the American Bible Society, the Sunday-School Union, and the Home Missionary Society, and for two years was editor of a religious paper, the New Hampshire Observer.
During his term at Washington Morril and William Hale were both nominated (1820) for governor of New Hampshire against Samuel Bell, but Governor Bell swept the state.
Reg. , Apr. 1849, gives a sketch of his life based on the best contemporary newspaper account, in the Concord Democrat and Freeman, Feb. 1, 1849.
On Aug. 3, 1824, he married Lydia Poore, of Goffstown, by whom he had four sons, three of whom survived him.
He married first, Sept. 25, 1794, Jane Wallace of Epsom, who died Dec. 14, 1823, without children.
He married first, Sept. 25, 1794, Jane Wallace of Epsom, who died Dec. 14, 1823, without children.
