William Morris Davis (congressman)

William Morris Davis (August 16, 1815 – August 5, 1891), was an abolitionist, author and a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Among his friends were the New York sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, and the lock inventor Linus Yale.^[1]

William Morris Davis was born in Keene, New York. He moved to Pennsylvania and became a sugar refiner in Philadelphia. Davis was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-seventh Congress. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1883.^[2]

He died in Keene Valley in 1891. Interment in Friends Fair Hill Burial Ground in Germantown, Philadelphia.

His extended family included Reverend Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, Abby Hopper Gibbons, Martha Coffin Wright, John Pelham and Edward Morris Davis.^[3]

• Nimrod of the Sea or The American Whaleman - AOSTON (Harper & Bros., New York 1874)^[4]

• United States Congress. "William Morris Davis (id: D000143)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• The Political Graveyard

• William Morris Davis (1815–1891): the story of a nineteenth century American - Arthur M. Johnson (Washington DC, 1951)

• The Davis, Brown, and Yale Families Correspondence, including personal letters from William Morris Davis, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.