Jeremiah Morrow

Education

Their son Jeremiah was born on the farm near Gettysburg, where he spent his first twenty-three years but managed to obtain a rather good education, particularly in mathematics.

Career

He arrived in the Miami Valley in the spring of 1795, surveyed land, grew corn, taught school, and invested in land in Warren County.

He won the esteem of his neighbors, who chose him in October 1800 to represent them in the second territorial legislature.

In the legislature he, with the "Chillicothe Junto, " opposed the efforts of St. Clair to postpone Ohio's statehood.

He was then chosen by the Jeffersonians to represent the state in Congress and took his seat on Oct. 17, 1803.

He was regularly reëlected and served in the House of Representatives from 1803 to 1813, when he entered the Senate and served six years.

He consistently advocated three changes in existing legislation: the sale of land in smaller units, cash payment, and lower price.

The act of 1820 that established a minimum cash price of $1. 25 an acre for units as small as 80 acres was the result of his advocacy (P. J. Treat, The National Land System, 1910, pp. 132, 139).

In 1818 he declined reëlection to the Senate.

As governor he inaugurated the canal-building program and was influential in establishing the public-school system.

He served in the state Senate for the session of 1827-28 in the House of Representatives for the session 1829-30 and 1835-36.

In 1840 he was elected to Congress and served from Oct. 13, 1840, to Mar. 3, 1843, but he felt that he belonged to an older generation and declined renomination.

He served without pay and resigned when the road was an assured success.

His nature was most unassuming; he lived in "republican simplicity. "

[Manuscripts of Jeremiah Morrow in the Ohio State Lib.

and in the Ohio State Arch.

and Hist.

Soc.

Quart. , Jan. , Apr. , July 1906; W. H. Smith, "Gov. Jeremiah Morrow; or a Familiar Talk about Monarchists and Jacobins, " Mag.

of Western Hist. , Oct. 1889, and Ohio Arch.

and Hist.

Quart. , June 1888. ]

Religion

Morrow, Jeremiah, , Pennsylvania 1771 1852 Male Congressman Governor (State) Senator first representative from the state of Ohio, senator, and governor, was the grandson of the Scotch-Irish Covenanter, Jeremiah Murray who left Londonderry for the New World about the middle of the eighteenth century and settled near Gettysburg, Pa. , in a neighborhood as Scotch and Presbyterian as any parish in Scotland.

Politics

He represented Ohio's tariff interests in the Harrisburg convention in 1827; he supported Adams in the election of 1828; he was later a leader of the Whig party in the state; he was a Clay elector in 1832; and he was chairman of the Ohio Whig convention which indorsed Harrison in 1836.

Connections

Of a family of six children only his eldest son survived him.

married:

Parkhill

Four years later, on Feb. 19, 1799, in Pennsylvania, he was married to his cousin, Mary Parkhill, and took her west to share his home on the frontier.

married:

John

Jeremiah Murray's son, John, a Federalist farmer (who spelled his name Morrow), had married in 1768 Mary Lockart.

Cousin:

Parkhill

Four years later, on Feb. 19, 1799, in Pennsylvania, he was married to his cousin, Mary Parkhill, and took her west to share his home on the frontier.

Grandson:

W.

Lib., Columbus; W. A. Taylor, Ohio Statesmen and Hundred Year Book (1892); biography by Josiah Morrow, his grandson, in The "Old Northwest" Geneal.

Grandson:

,