Harrison S. Morris (1856-1948), was a Wyncote native, writer, editor, and one of the United States’ first professional arts administrators. From 1893 to 1905 he served as the Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the nation’s oldest art school.

According to local historian Chuck Langerman, Harrison and his wife Anna owned the 110-acre Endsmeet Farm on Rices Mill Road in Wyncote. When Morris passed in 1948, his wife Anna Wharton Morris inherited the farm, eventually selling it to the Cheltenham Township School District in May of 1956 for approximately $250,000. Ground was broken for the new Cheltenham High School on June 25, 1957, and the cornerstone laid on May 17,1959.

Anna Wharton Morris was active in prison reform and other social reform movements of her day and was a prolific writer, primarily of short stories and essays. Her father was prominent Philadelphia industrialist and philanthropist Joseph Wharton. In 1881, Mr. Wharton founded the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the world’s first collegiate school of business and a school that quite a few Cheltenham High School alumni have graduated from over the years.

Morris was also the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine and the art editor of the Ladies Home Journal. He was the author of poetry, fiction, and essays, and was in frequent contact with artistic and literary figures of his time, including Abbott Handerson Thayer and George de Forest Brush.

For more on Morris’ professional contributions, you can click here.

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Photo: Wikidata