John W. Morris
Engineer Memoirs
Lieutenant General John W. Morris
Childhood and West Point Years
Q:
I would like to start out by asking you a little bit about your early life. You are a native of
Princess Anne, Maryland. Was your family originally from that area?
A:
My mother's family and my father's family are among the original families over in Tidewater.
Both came there in the
My mother's family was Tilghman and is well known in
Tidewater. In fact, one of our relatives was Colonel
Tilghman, who was Adjutant General
for George Washington. My mother's family moved from the lower part-possibly the Eastern
Shore of
up into Worcester County, Maryland, near Berlin and Snow Hill. My father's
family was from a similar area, and they migrated northward into Somerset County. Incidentally,
Somerset County at one time included Worcester County. My father's family settled near the
family home where I was born.
Over the years several in the family were military types. In the Civil War my family was
predominantly Southern; my great grandfather died as the result of being imprisoned by Union
troops. The Eastern shore of Maryland supported the Confederacy. Constants in my background
include the area, the family roots, and a small-town atmosphere. Few people ever left. They all
stayed and lived and died there. They regenerated themselves. There were not that many families
to start. Most of the people there now are probably relatives, so to speak.
The Morris family was mercantile. They were not among the elite by any sense of the word, yet
they were comfortable.
Q.. How about your father? What was his occupation?
His father, my grandfather, owned a clothing store-John W. Morris and Sons. There were three
A:
sons. Before he died one son had moved to California and the other two then opened up their own
separate mercantile businesses. My father later bought a theater and was in the theater and
clothing business when the Depression of 1929 almost wiped him out. He held on, barely. In
1934 he was appointed postmaster in Princess Anne. He was a strong Democrat and a county
leader in the Democratic Party, so Franklin D. Roosevelt made him postmaster. In those days that
was a reward for long and faithful service, I guess. He was qualified to be postmaster, too, I don't
mean that.
Both my mother and father worked very hard in the theater business. Money for my schooling
was hard to come by. I was not a great student in any sense of the word, but I was able to get a
scholarship to finish high school at the Charlotte Hall Military Academy on the Western shore
of Maryland in Saint Mary's County. I graduated from that high school in 1937 when I was 15,
and I needed a lot of growing up to do before I went to college. So I stayed for a post-graduate
year in 1938. I worked for my father in 1939.
When the time came to go to college, I received a scholarship to Western Maryland College.
Before that I had taken the entrance exam to West Point, but my poor background in English
showed up, and I didn't pass. So I went to Western Maryland College and was fortunate enough
to get another appointment as a first alternate. I took the entrance exam again and passed. The
man before me failed, and I entered West Point and ultimately became one of the few members
of my family to get a college education.
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