Morgan, Oliver J.
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- Connection to Legacies of American Slavery Database
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Morgan, Oliver J.
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Oliver J. Morgan was a cotton planter and among the wealthiest people in Louisiana, and made the decisive pledge to the University of the South’s endowment fund.
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Born in New Hampshire, Oliver Jones Morgan immigrated to Louisiana with his brothers where he settled to amass a fortune worth $1,182,314.80 at the time of his death. Starting his career young, Morgan served as one of the early Parish Judges for Ouachita Parish from 1813-1832. Morgan then ended his political career to devote his energies to cotton production in Carroll Parish in northeast Louisiana. By the mid-nineteenth century Morgan had become one of the richest men in Louisiana, owning one of the largest cotton plantations along the Mississippi and becoming the first millionaire in the area. At the time of his death in 1860, Morgan enslaved 353 people on his cotton plantation. His enslaved property was appraised at $196,961, and his landed property at $947,153. At the end of his life Morgan owned a home in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee, the resort owned and operated by John Armfield, a partner in the nation's largest interstate slave trading firm. Morgan’s pledge to donate $40,000 to the founding of the University of the South – a figure equivalent to roughly $1.5 million today – enabled the university's organizers to meet their fund-raising goal for launching construction. Morgan's pledge was to fund a professorship in agricultural chemistry.
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May 23, 1784
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October 5, 1860
Position: 761 (96 views)
