Morrison, R. H. (Robert Hall), 1798-1889

Robert Hall Morrison was the first President of Davidson College serving from 1836 to 1840. A graduate of the University of North Carolina (1816), Morrison was licensed as a Presbyterian minister by the Concord Presbytery. He founded the North Carolina Telegram, the first religious gazette in the South while in Fayetteville in 1822. He was pastor of Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church from 1827 until accepting the presidency of Davidson College. He left Davidson due to ill health and retired to a Lincolnton County farm, Cottage Home. He returned to preaching in 1842 and became known as one of the best preachers in North Carolina.

Robert Hall Morrison was a Presbyterian minister and educator from Lincoln County, N.C., and father of Mary Anna (Morrison) Jackson (1831- 1915), wife of Stonewall Jackson.

Robert Hall Morrison, son of William Morrison (d. 1821), was born in 1798 in the Rocky River community near Concord, Mecklenburg (now Cabarrus) County, N.C. He attended the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1818, and studied theology at Princeton. He entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church and was pastor to congregations in Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties, and, later, in Fayetteville, N.C., until he became the first president of Davidson College, Mecklenburg County, in 1837. He resigned from the college in 1840 due to ill health and retired to his Cottage Home Plantation in Lincoln County, North Carolina. He continued to preach in that county at the Machpelah Presbyterian Church until his death in 1889.

Robert Hall Morrison married Mary Graham (1801-1864), daughter of General Joseph Graham of Lincoln County. They had ten children who lived to adulthood. Their sons were William W., who worked for his uncle Senator William Alexander Graham in the U.S. Department of the Navy; Joseph Graham, who served on General Thomas Stonewall Jackson's staff during the Civil War; Robert Hall; and Alfred James. Several of their daughters were married to prominent leaders of the Confederacy: Isabella to General Daniel Harvey Hill, Mary Anna (1831-1915) to General Thomas Jonathan ( Stonewall ) Jackson; Eugenia to General Rufus Clay Barringer; Susan Washington to Major Alphonso Calhoun Avery; Harriet to James Patton Irwin; and Laura to Colonel John E. Brown.

Robert Hall Morrison's elder brother, James McEwen Morrison, left North Carolina in 1816 for Dallas County, Ala., where he served as sheriff. In 1835, he and his family moved to Water Valley, Miss. James McEwen Morrison's son, Hugh McEwen Morrison, served as chaplain in the 19th Regiment, Mississippi Volunteers, Army of Northern Virginia, during the Civil War. Robert Hall Morrison's sister Sally married Andrew Walker of Concord, Cabarrus County, N.C.

The Reverend James Morrison (1795-1870), son of John Morrison, was a third cousin of Robert Hall Morrison. He was born in the Rocky River community and, following graduation from the University of North Carolina in 1814, moved to Rockbridge County, Va., where he served as minister to the New Providence Presbyterian Church until his death. First cousins to James Morrison and third cousins to Robert Hall Morrison were the Reverend James Elijah Morrison (b. 1805) and the Reverend Elam Johnston Morrison (1800-1825), both Presbyterian ministers in North Carolina and Virginia.