Richard Valentine Morris

Richard Valentine Morris (March 8, 1768 – May 13, 1815) was a United States Navy officer and politician. Early life He was born on March 8, 1768, in Morrisania, then a town in Westchester County, which became in 1898 a neighborhood in the borough of the Bronx, New York City. He was one of ten children born to Lewis Morris (1726–1798), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Mary Walton (1727–1794), a member of a well-known merchant family. His uncles included Staats Long Morris, Richard Morris, the Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, and Gouverneur Morris, a United States Senator from New York. His grand-uncle was Robert Hunter Morris, a Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and his great-grandfather was Colonial Governor Lewis Morris. His aunt, Helena Magdalena Morris (1762–1840), was married to John Rutherfurd (1760–1840), a United States Senator from New Jersey who served from 1791 to 1798. Career On June 7, 1798, he was appointed as Captain in command of , during the Quasi-War with France and made several successful captures of French vessels. At the reduction of the US Navy after the war with France, Morris was retained as fifth in rank and recalled to command the Mediterranean Squadron in 1802 during the First Barbary War.