George U. Morris and Mary Chase Steele Morris papers

George Upham Morris was born in Massachusetts in 1830. He entered the United States Navy in 1847 and served throughout the Civil War. As a midshipman he served on the Albany, the Independence, and the Lexington, and attended the Naval Academy, graduating in 1852. After detachment from the Academy he served on the Princeton, the Dolphin, the Decatur, the Cyane and the Cumberland, until it was sunk in 1862 by the C.S.S. Virginia (the ironclad constructed on the hull of the U.S.S. Merrimack).

During the battle with the Virginia, Morris was acting commander of the Cumberland. Morris was attached to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron well into 1863, when he then transferred farther south to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron in October of that year. He was on the U.S.S. Cumberland when he wrote the first letter in this collection, in 1861. In two later letters, he recalls the Cumberland's final battle. After the sinking of the Cumberland, Morris was given command of the gunboat U.S.S. Port Royal. In his love letters written on board the Port Royal he relates his boredom and anxieties as well as dramatic naval action, including capturing blockade runners, taking refugees aboard, guarding the approaches to the mouth of the Mississippi and being fired upon by enemy ship and shore batteries. While with the West Gulf Squadron in Mobile Bay he was ordered to pursue the Alabama to Cuba, but he never sighted the ship. At one point a storm drove him out to sea in a small boat with six crewmen and a broken rudder, and his squadron despaired of finding him.

Morris was later attached to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron under Rear Admiral J. A. Dahlgren, and was commanding officer of the U.S.S. Chenango at Charleston, South Carolina. He was made a Commander in the U.S. Navy on July 25, 1866. Morris's first wife had died on February 18, 1858, without issue. He married Mary Chase Steele in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 7, 1864. About ten years after the war he was serving as commanding officer at the Navy Yard in Pensacola, Florida, when the Yard caught fire in very cold weather. He led the fight to quench the fire, but succumbed afterwards to a respiratory infection which contributed to his death from consumption (phthisis pulmonalis) in 1875 at Jordan Alum Springs, VA. His widow, Mary, never remarried and died on June 25, 1930, leaving no heirs.