Morrison, David A.

Born: 1809-02-26 Hardin County, Kentucky

Died: 1889-02-08 Edgar County, Illinois

Flourished: 1826 to 1889 Edgar County, Illinois

David A. Morrison, farmer and livestock raiser, was raised on his family’s farm in Kentucky, and following the death of his father, settled with his mother and a sister in Edgar County, Illinois in 1826. Morrison initially rented a farm, then between 1832 and 1851, he acquired over 700 acres of land in the county. During the Black Hawk War, he was a private in Captain Isaac Sanford’s company of the First Regiment of the Second Brigade of Illinois Mounted Volunteers and subsequently served as a colonel in the Nineteenth Illinois Militia for about eight years. He married Catharine (Katherine) E. Ross in 1833 and the pair had several children. In 1860, Morrison owned real estate valued at $14,000 and possessed $3,900 in personal property. He was a Freemason.

The History of Edgar County, Illinois (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron, Jr., 1879), 228, 477-79, 484, 653-54; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 31; For an exhaustive list of Morrison’s land purchases, search “Morrison David A,” https://www.ilsos.gov/isa/landsrch.jsp; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Edgar County, 21 March 1833, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Edgar County, IL, 114; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Edgar County, IL, 180; The Champaign Daily Gazette (IL), 14 February 1889, 1:3; Gravestone, Little Grove Cemetery, Paris, IL.