John H. Morgan

John Hamilton Morgan was a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was also an educator and politician.

Morgan was born on August 8, 1842 in Greensburg, Indiana. The Civil War broke out when he was eighteen years old and he joined the Union army and fought in the 123rd Illinois Volunteer Regiment as a sergeant. After the war, he graduated from Eastman’s Commercial College in New York. After his graduation he traveled to Utah where he was hired as a university instructor in Salt Lake City.

In 1967 he founded the Morgan Commercial College, which he operated until 1874; the University of Deseret, the precursor of the University of Utah, competed heavily with Morgan’s college. Among Morgan’s students were Heber J. Grant, J. Golden Kimball, Orson F. Whitney, Matthias F. Cowley, and Helen Melvina Groesbeck, whom he married in 1868. They were the parents of eleven children.

After Morgan joined the Church in November 1867, he served in several positions in the Church, including missionary in the Southern States Mission from 1875 to 1877 and president of the mission in 1878. On October 8, 1884, he was called to serve as one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy, where he served until his death on August 14, 1894.

Morgan served a term as a representative in the Utah Territorial Legislature.

He practiced plural marriage when he married Annie Mildred Smith and Mary Ann Linton.