Pueblo County Biographies

Pueblo County, Colorado
HENRY O. MORRIS

Contributed by Karen Mitchell.

Henry O. Morris, the well known secretary and treasurer of the Proven Fields Oil Company, residing in Pueblo, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 14th of October, 1855, a son of Henry J. and Malinda (Bigney) Morris. His uncle, Major Bigney, was one of the very earliest of the Colorado pioneers and at one time was editor of the Pueblo Chieftain. Henry J. Morris, father of Henry O. Morris, was engaged in the blockade service during the Civil war. He died in France. The family afterward removed to Janesville, Wisconsin, and later sought a home in the west, settling at Leavenworth, Kansas. In September, 1874, they came to Colorado, taking up their abode in Pueblo, and thus Henry O. Morris became a resident of this city when a youth of nineteen years. He had acquired his education in the graded schools of the various localities in which he had lived and after the removal to Pueblo he became identified with newspaper interests as a member of the staff of the Pueblo Chieftain. Later he was engaged in cavalry service and geological survey work of the government for five years, after which he returned to Pueblo and for a quarter of a century was engaged in the real estate and insurance business in this city, dealing largely in ranches. He was thus active through the period of early development and colonization in this part of the state. A year ago he became one of the organizers of the Proven Fields Oil Company, which buys only proven oil lands which it then develops. Its work has been carried forward most satisfactorily and successfully and one may always depend upon its property as of productive value. Mr. Morris was married on the 23d of December, 1893, to Miss Matta C. Kinnear, of Baltimore, Maryland, and they are highly esteemed socially in the city in which they make their home. History Of Colorado Illustrated Volume III Chicago The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company 1918

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