Topic: Levi Morton

Levi Parsons Morton (May 16, 1824 – May 16, 1920) was a Representative from New York and the 22nd Vice President of the United States (1889-1893). He also later served as the 31st Governor of New York.

Morton was born in Shoreham, in Addison County, Vermont. His parents were the Rev. Daniel Oliver Morton (1788–1852), a Congregationalist minister of old New England stock, and Lucretia Parsons (1789–1862). His older brother, David Oliver Morton (1815–1859), was Mayor of Toledo, Ohio from 1849 to 1850.

He left school early and worked as a clerk in a general store in Enfield, Massachusetts, taught school in Boscawen, New Hampshire, engaged in mercantile pursuits in Hanover, New Hampshire, moved to Boston, entered the dry-goods business in New York City, and engaged in banking there. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1876 to the 45th Congress, but he was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to be an honorary commissioner to the Paris Exhibition of 1878.