Thomas Morris (British Army officer)

Thomas Morris (1732?–1818?) was a British Army officer and writer.

Born at Carlisle, where he was baptised on 22 April 1732, he was one of four sons of Captain Thomas Morris, soldier author of the popular song Kitty Crowder, who died about 1752.Charles Morris the songwriter was his brother.

Morris entered Winchester College as a scholar in 1741. After time in tuition in London, joined the 17th Foot, which was his father's regiment, at Kinsale, in 1748. In 1753 he took leave and spent time in Paris, giving him a command of the French language.

In 1757 Morris shipped with his regiment for the Americas. He was at Canajoharie in 1761, from where he wrote to his good friend Richard Montgomery.

Morris spent time in Martinique, the 17th Regiment having taken part in the Invasion of Martinique (1762) under Robert Monckton, and served at the siege of Havana (1762). He was then under Colonel John Bradstreet in North America. For Bradstreet, who was marching along the southern shore of Lake Erie from Niagara to re-establish British control in Indiana, he undertook a chancy mission in 1764, just after the end of the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War in the North American theatre). When Morris was sent off on 26 August, without an escort of soldiers, Bradstreet had been misinformed by Delaware Indians and Shawnees about the attitude of Native Americans to the west.

Morris ascended the Maumee River, with the permission of the Miami Indians, carrying a message to the French at Fort de Chartres, and with a mission of pacification, directed to make peace with the Native American groups he met. He was supposed to summon these groups to a council at Detroit with the British. He was supposed also to cross the watershed with the Wabash River (at Kekionga, close to modern Fort Wayne), and make his way into Illinois down the Wabash.

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