Julius Sterling Morton

AKA: J. Sterling Morton

Born 1832-04-22 Adams, NY (USA)

Died 1902-04-27
Lake Forest, IL

Morton came to Nebraska in 1854 and was a leading figure in the Democratic Party beginning in territorial days. He was acting Governor of Nebraska on several occasions, and would be Secretary of Agriculture in President Cleveland's cabinet, 1893-97. He began his career as a journalist, writing on agricultural and political topics. Morton was an early President of the Nebraska Historical Society. He wrote a history of Nebraska and published a collection of Native folk tales. Late in his career he was an opponent of William Jennings Bryan's populism and tried to limit its influence in Democratic Party circles. He is best known as a founder of Arbor Day, and for his magnificent home Arbor Lodge, near Nebraska City.

While Secretary of Agriculture Morton encouraged Clarence Paine (then Secretary of the Nebraska State Historical Association) to help establish the Missouri Valley Historical Association, which eventually served as the foundation for the American Historical Association.

See:

James C. Olson, J. Sterling Morton: Pioneer Statesman, Founder of Arbor Day, 1942, 1972.
Nebraska Writers Revised, 1964.
Influence on historical studies see: Lauck, Jon K. "The Prairie Historians and the Foundations of Midwestern History.
"The Annals of Iowa" 71 (2012), 137-173. (Also available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/vol71/iss2/3 )
On Arbor Lodge see the chapter in Lisa Knopp, The Nature of Home: A Lexicon and Essays, 2002

dsc

Places Lived

Nebraska City, NE

Author Of

Fiction
Nonfiction
Journalism

Keywords

Nebraska History; Folklore; Agriculture

Education

1854, Union College in Michigan

Occupation

Acting Governor of Nebraska - twice
Secretary of Agriculture in President Cleveland's cabinet, 1893-97
Founder of Arbor Day

Honors

“150 Notable Nebraskans”, Number 11 on the Journal Star Sesquicentennial List of Significant Nebraskans

Associations

President of the Nebraska Historical Society
Established Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City
Son, Joy Morton, founded the Morton Salt Company

Bibliography

A History of Nebraska from the Earliest Explorations of the Trans-Mississippi Region.(various editions)
White Cow: And other tales, being some anecdotes about Indian orators of the Territorial Period of Nebraska.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to heritage@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.