JOHN TYLER MORGAN
ORGAN, JOHN TYLER, son of a merchant and farmer in Athens, Tennessee, and in Calhoun county, Alabama, acquired a partial education under the direction of his mother in Forest Hill academy before he was nine years old; was admitted to the bar in 1845; was a soldier in the Confederate States army, 1861-65, passing through the various grades from private to brigadier-general; was a presidential elector in 1860; member of the Alabama secession convention of 1861; again a presidential elector, 1876; United States senator for Alabama from March 5, 1877; arbitrator on Bering Sea fisheries, 1892; and commissioner to organize a territorial government in Hawaii, 1898. He was born in Athens, McMinn county, Tennessee, June 20, 1824. His father, George Morgan, son of Gideon Morgan, merchant, was a merchant in Athens, Tennessee, and married Frances Irby, a relative of Chancellor Samuel Tyler (1766-1812) of Virginia, a nephew of Judge John Tyler, father of President Tyler. He removed to Calhoun county, Alabama, in 1833, where he was a merchant and farmer, and there his son worked on the farm until he was sixteen years old, when he began the study of law in the office of his brother-in-law, the Honorable William Parish Chilton, at Mardisville, Talladega county, Alabama. He was admitted to the bar in 1845. He was married, February 11, 1846, to Miss Cornelia G. Willis, of Talladega county, Alabama. He practised law in Talladega county for ten years and then removed to Dallas county, with an office first at Selma and subsequently at Cahaba. He was a presidential elector-at-large from the state of Alabama on the Breckinridge and Lane ticket in 1860, and a delegate from Dallas county to the Alabama state convention which passed the ordinance of secession, January 11, 1861. He joined the Cahaba Rifles as private and when the Rifles were assigned to the 5th Alabama infantry, Colonel R. E. Rhodes, in April, 1861, he was commissioned major of the regiment. The regiment was ordered to Virginia, became part of the Army of the Potomac under General Beauregard, and was present but not actively engaged in the battle
