Story
Family tradition is that William, when a boy of about twelve years old, went aboard of a vessel at the Scotch-yards in London near the Thames. While he was aboard and looking about, the ship left her mooring and he found himself on his way to America. Upon is arrival in Philadelphia, he learned that the vessel would not return to England for some months and the owner of the vessel took the boy to his home and there he was cared for given an opportunity to show the spirit that was in him. The merchant, being pleased with young William, wrote the boy's father for permission to retain him, and William remained.
William Morris and his family were the first white people that made a permanent settlement in the Kanawha Valley, having arrived there either in the fall of 1773 or spring of 1774. He came from Culpeper County, Virginia.
Prior to his arrival, a Walter Kelly attempted to make a settlement on the Kanawha river at the mouth of Kelly's Creek but Kelly was killed by the Indians and when William Morris arrived, there was no white man in the valley and no settlement.
When William reached the Kanawha Valley, he made his settlement at the mouth of Kellys Creek, on the spot where Walter Kelly had attempted to make his home. The family of William Morris was of such number and strength that an ordinary Indian party was not willing to attack them, and the Morrises decided to remain and, if necessary, to fight it out.
In the fall of 1774, General Andrew Lewis, with his little army, marched from Lewisburg to the mouth of the Kanawha, or from Camp Union to Point Pleasant. The sons of William Morris, John and Henry, went into this army and were at the battle of Point Pleasant.
The Morris settlement was in a wilderness, one miles west of Lewisburg in the then county of Botetourt, afterwards Greenbrier, and about the same distance to the Ohio River, on which there were no settlements below Wheeling or Pittsburg. The families had to depend upon themselves for everything. They brought their guns and ammunition, their plows, hoes, axes, and all other tools they had. William Morris and his family went to work immediately upon their arrival in this new country and made rapid progress in opening farms and building houses and made preparations of defense against marauding parties of Indians, which for many years afterwards, were constantly prowling through the country.
There were not many other settlers that came until 1788 when the Clendenins came and made their settlement at the mouth of Elk River. And when the county of Kanawha was organized in 1789, it was said there were but thirteen voters in the county, but there were 118 residents of said county by 1792.
By this time William Morris was an old man and in 1792 he made his will and in January 1793 it was admitted to probate, which was the first will recorded in the new county and it can be found in deed book A, page 30.
The will of William Morris disposed of his real estate and mentions the names of his ten children. He made a provision that if his wife wished "to engage herself in the bonds of wedlock," that the property he had given to her should revert to his estate. She was not satisfied with this provision that he made for her, for the record of the Court shows that "she came into Court and broke the said will." She preferred to take her dower provided by law, rather than accept the provisions of the will made for her.
She afterwards married a young Irishman by the name of Thompson, but she did not long survive her first husband.
The Morris family was English and they were Baptists. They had a little church near the mouth of Kellys Creek, close to the spot where the little brick Methodist church now (1990) stands, and supposedly the records of this church are with some of the descendants to this day.
They were all moral men and many of them religious men. They lived for years surrounded by dangers that might at any hour destroy their lives. They saw a civil government established, and a town spring up near to their homes.
He lived through the Indian wars, through the war for Independence, saw the government of the United States inaugurated as well as that of the county of Kanawha and the town of Charleston.