Background
Edmund Needham Morrill was born in Westbrook, Maine, to Rufus and Mary (Webb) Morrill. He attended the common schools at Westbrook Academy and learned the trade of tanning from his father.
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Edmund Needham Morrill was born in Westbrook, Maine, to Rufus and Mary (Webb) Morrill. He attended the common schools at Westbrook Academy and learned the trade of tanning from his father.
Educated Westbrook Academy. Superintendent schools, Westbrook, 1856. Removed to Kansas, 1857.
Elected, October 1857, to first Free State legislature.
Reëlected to legislature, January 1858, under the Lecompton constitution. Served, private to sergeant, 7th Kansas cavalry, 1861-1862.
Appointed captain and commissary of subsistence, August 1862. Brevetted major for meritorious service.
At the age of 23, he moved to Kansas. In 1861, he enlisted as a private in Company C, 7th Kansas Cavalry. Within a year, he was a captain, and by 1865 he was a major.
After the Civil War, he entered the banking business and remained in that business for the rest of his life.
Elizabeth died November 1868 at Hiawatha, Kansas. They had three children, all born at Hiawatha.
In 1866, he was elected clerk of the district court. In 1872, he was elected to the Kansas Senate.
He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1882, serving four two-year terms before declining another, announcing instead his retirement from politics.
Nevertheless, at the urging of his friends, he accepted the nomination for governor of Kansas in 1894 and served one term, being defeated in 1896. Morrill died March 14, 1909, in San Antonio, Texas, and is buried in Hiawatha"s Mount Hope Cemetery.
Member Congress, 1883-1891.
Married Caroline J. Nash, December 25, 1869.