(1768–1812), daughter of Augustus Van Cortlandt and granddaughter of Frederick Van Cortlandt. Capt. Staats Morris (1765–1826), who married Everarda van Braam Houckgeest (1765–1816), the daughter of Andreas van Braam Houckgeest and Baroness Catharina C.G. van Reeds van Oudtshoorn. Capt. Richard Valentine Morris (1768–1815), who married Anne Walton (1773–1858) After the war, Morris had to rebuild the family estate, which had been looted and burned by the British when they occupied New York. In 1790, he offered the land, now part of the South Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania, as the site of the U.S. capital. He died on the estate and is buried in the family vault beneath St. Ann's Church in the Bronx. Descendants Through his eldest son, Lewis V. Morris, he was grandfather to Lewis Morris (1785–1863) and Sabina Elliott Morris (1789–1857). Lewis Morris (b. 1785) was the father of Charles Manigault Morris (1820–1895), a Confederate officer. Sabina married her first cousin, Robert Walter Rutherfurd (1788–1852), the son of John Rutherfurd and Helena Morris, and was the mother of Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816–1892), a pioneering astrophotographer who took the first telescopic photographs of the moon and sun, as well as many stars and planets. Through his son, Staats Morris, his great-grandson was Daniel François van Braam Morris (b. 1840), a Dutchman and governor of Celebes in the Dutch East Indies. A great-granddaughter of his grandfather, Lewis Morris, named Mary Antill was married to Gerritt G. Lansing, himself a brother of Congressman John Lansing. John Lansing's daughter, Sarah, was married to Edward Livingston, a great-grandson of Philip Livingston. In popular culture Lewis Morris is portrayed by Ronald Kross in the 1969 Broadway musical 1776 and by Howard Caine in the 1972 film. Although Morris was chairman of the New York delegation to the Second Continental Congress, he abstained ("courteously") on every vote, claiming that the New York Provincial Congress never gave Morris explicit instructions on anything. However, when George Washington noted in a dispatch that Morris's estates were destroyed by the British, but his family was taken to safety in Connecticut, Morris abandons his lack of instructions and moves to sign the Declaration. See also Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence References External links Biography by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, 1856 1726 births 1798 deaths Morris family (Morrisania and New Jersey) People from the Bronx American Episcopalians American people of Dutch descent American people of English