Finding aid for the Daniel Edgar Morgan Papers

Biography of Daniel Edgar Morgan

Daniel Edgar Morgan was an Ohio state senator (1929-1930), city manager of Cleveland, Ohio (1930-1932), and judge of the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals (1939-1949). Born in 1877 in Oak Hill, Jackson County, Ohio, he attended Marietta College from 1893-1895 and graduated from Oberlin College in 1897. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1900 and began practicing law in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1901. He was a member of Cleveland City Council from 1909-1911, and became the first president of the City Club of Cleveland in 1912. He was a member of the Cleveland charter Commission in 1913, and the Executive Board of the Cleveland Citizens League. He married Wilma Ball in 1926, and became a member of the Ohio State Senate in 1929-1930. He was Cleveland's city manager from 1930-1932, and was defeated in his campaign to be Cleveland's mayor in 1932.

He ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for governor of Ohio in 1934, and in 1939 was appointed to a vacancy on the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals. He was successful elected to this court seat in 1940, and he served on the National War Labor Board in Cleveland from 1943-1944. He was the chairman of the Cleveland Post-War Planning Council from 1943-1945, and was reelected to the Court of Appeals in 1944. Morgan died on May 1, 1949, in Cleveland.

Morgan was married twice. He married Ella A. Matthews, a women's suffragette, in 1915, and they had one daughter, Nancy Olwen (Mrs. Arnaud Leavelle). In 1926 he married Wilma Ball.

Scope and Content

The Daniel Edgar Morgan Papers, 1917-1949, consist of correspondence, speeches, legal papers and documents, reports and memoranda on civic, municipal, and national affairs, scrapbooks of clippings, pamphlets, and other material on social and international questions, the Republican Party in Cleveland and Ohio, Morgan's interest in civic organizations, his term in the Ohio State Senate, the city managership of Cleveland, political campaigns for himself and Harold H. Burton, his law practice and activities in wartime agencies, and his service on the Ohio Court of Appeals.

This collection will be useful to researchers studying the legal, political, and governmental history of Cleveland, Ohio, Cuyahoga County, and the state of Ohio in the 1920s-1940s. References are made to the following persons: William E. Borah, John W. Bricker, Arthur H. Day, Sarah Bush Lincoln, Robert A. Taft, and Wendell Willkie.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Access

Access to this collection is closed until 2021. Consult the WRHS Curator of Manuscripts for further details.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 3069 Daniel Edgar Morgan Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

Acquisition Information

Gift of Mrs. Arnaud Leavelle in 1955.

Processing Information

Processed by John J. Horton in 1960.

Detailed Description of The Collection