John MORRISON

Submitted by Descendant:  Sara Parham JOHNSON

John Morrison was born circa 1807 in North Carolina.  He lived in Georgia, marrying Sibbiah Blair born 1801.  While living in Georgia, they had 4 children and then moved to Marion County, Florida.  There, two more children were born in 1846 and 1848.  John died on 8 July 1858.

The February 1846 minutes of the Marion County Florida Commission show that John Morrison was on the first board of County Commissioners.  He was elected in October of 1845 showing he had lived there long enough before the election to be well known and trusted to be elected to this office.

In an excerpt from The Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. XXVI, c 1844, The Territory of Florida 1839-1845, John Morrison and his brother-in-law William Blair signed a petition certifying them as residents of Florida before it became a state.  The petitioners stated that the US Government passed an act on 4 August 1842 to provide “armed occupation and settlement of the peninsula of East Florida”.  The petitioners lived on the land and preserved it for the government from Indian intervention.  They requested land grants.

On 1 April 1854 bounty land in Marion County, Florida that had been given to a soldier in the Florida War was returned to the General Land Office and was granted to John Morrison.  Also, on 1 May 1855 a pre-emptive certificate was filed in the Register of Land Offices in Gainesville, Florida stating that full payment had been received from John Morrison for additional land in Marion County.

John Morrison was first established as a Florida Pioneer in 1988