dedicated student and a wide reader. After having been stationed in Cincinnati for several years, he was, in 1833, appointed presiding elder of the Cincinnati District. In April 1834 he was appointed editor of the Western Christian Advocate, an important periodical of his denomination, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. As early as 1835 he was known to be an advocate of total abstinence (from alcoholic beverage). The Rev. Thomas Asbury Morris was elected to the episcopacy of the M.E. Church by the 1836 General Conference. He was diligent and faithful in the discharge of all his duties, traveling extensively through the circuit of the Annual Conferences, which then embraced the whole of the settled part of the U.S.A. In 1844, when the church divided North and South over the issue of slavery, Bishop Morris remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church (the northern branch), notwithstanding that Virginia was his native State. Needless to say, he regretted the separation deeply. The division was healed in 1939 when the M.E. Church, the M.E. Church, South, and the M.P. Church reunited to form the Methodist Church. In 1968 the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church. For sixteen years of his thirty-six total years in the Episcopacy, Bishop Morris was Senior Bishop of his denomination (following the death of Bishop Waugh in 1858). He was practical, witty, and blunt, but kind. His spirit was said to be indomitable, and he possessed charming simplicity, both of taste and manner. McKendree University gave him the (honorary) degree of D.D. in 1841. Later years and death For several years Bishop Morris was in impaired health, able to do but little official work. Consequently, the General Conference voted to relieve him from any regular duties. His last illness lasted a little over a week. He died 2 September 1874 in Springfield, Ohio. See also List of bishops of the United Methodist Church References Cyclopaedia of Methodism, Matthew Simpson, D.D., LL.D., Ed., (Revised Edition.) Philadelphia, Louis H. Everts, 1880. Minutes of the Ohio Conference, M.E. Church Attribution Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church American Methodist bishops Morris Editors of Christian publications American newspaper editors Converts to Christianity Converts to Methodism American skeptics Religious leaders from Charleston, West Virginia 1794 births 1874 deaths 19th-century Methodist bishops 19th-century American bishops People from Warren County, Ohio People from West Virginia in the War of 1812