Morris’ birth name was Ro­bert Will­iams Peck­ham; af­ter his fa­ther died, he en­tered a fos­ter home and took the name of his fos­ter fam­i­ly, Morris. A mem­ber of the Pres­by­ter­i­an de­nom­in­a­tion, Morris wrote ex­ten­sive­ly on Free­ma­son­ry. In 1868, he vis­it­ed the Ho­ly Land on be­half of the Free­ma­sons, the out­come of which was his work Free­ma­son­ry in the Ho­ly Land. He al­so wrote some 300 po­e­tic­al piec­es.

• Brown, pp. 260-1

1. Mem­ories of Gal­i­lee