Edmund Needham MORRILL, Congress, KS (1834-1909)

MORRILL, Edmund Needham, a Representative from Kansas; born in Westbrook, Cumberland County, Maine, February 12, 1834; attended school in his native town and was graduated from Westbrook Seminary in 1855; superintendent of the Westbrook schools in 1856 and 1857; moved to Kansas in 1857 and settled in Brown County, where he erected a sawmill; member of the Territorial legislature in 1857 and 1858; enlisted on October 5, 1861, in the Union Army and served in the Seventh Regiment, Kansas Volunteer Cavalry; promoted to sergeant October 10, 1861; appointed captain and commissary of subsistence in August 1862; mustered out as major in October 1865; clerk of the district court of Brown County, Kans., 1866-1870; county clerk 1866-1873; founded the first bank in Brown County, in 1871, and was its president from 1887 until his death; president of the First National Bank of Leavenworth, Kans., for seven years; member of the State senate 1872-1874 and 1876-1880, and served as president pro tempore in 1877; founded the Morrill Free Public Library at Hiawatha, Kans., in 1882; elected as a Republican to the Forty-eighth and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1883-March 3, 1891); chairman, Committee on Invalid Pensions (Fifty-first Congress); was not a candidate for renomination in 1890; resumed banking; founded the Hiawatha Academy, Hiawatha, Kans., in 1889; Governor of Kansas 1895-1897; unsuccessful candidate for reelection as Governor; died in San Antonio, Tex., March 14, 1909; interment in Mount Hope Cemetery, Hiawatha, Brown County, Kans.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present