Julius Sterling Morton, also known as J. Sterling Morton, was born on April 22, 1832, in Jefferson County, New York. His parents ran a general store. In 1834, his parents and grandfather, Abner Morton, moved to Monroe, Michigan. There, Abner and his brother Edward operated a newspaper.
In 1854, 20-year-old Julius married Caroline Joy French in Detroit, and the young couple headed west for adventure in the wilds of Nebraska Territory. They settled on 160 treeless acres (the key word here is treeless).
Not only did the new residents miss the beauty of the trees they left behind, they also missed how trees served as windbreaks to keep soil in place, how trees could be used as fuel and building materials, and the shade from the hot sun trees offered.
J. Sterling Morton went on to become a Nebraska newspaper editor, and his enthusiasm for trees lead to his strong advocacy that individuals and civic groups plant them. Despite having a busy career and four sons, Morton planted thousands of trees on the homestead he called the Morton “ranche.”
As secretary of the Nebraska Territory, he further spread his message of the value of trees. And on January 4, 1872, Morton first proposed a tree planting holiday to be called “Arbor Day” at a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture.
According to ArborDay.org, the celebration date was set for April 10, 1872. Prizes were offered to counties and individuals for the largest number of properly planted trees on that day. It was estimated that more than 1 million trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day.
In 1885, Arbor Day was named a legal state holiday in Nebraska, and April 22 (Julius Sterling Morton’s birthday 😉) was selected as the date for its permanent annual observance.
Many other states also passed legislation to observe Arbor Day each year. By 1920, more than 45 states and territories were celebrating Arbor Day.
From 1893 until 1897, J. Sterling Morton served as President Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of Agriculture.
J. Sterling Morton died at the age of 70 on April 27, 1902, writing just a month earlier that he hoped to plant trees as soon as the weather turned warm.
Morton was the subject of a statue representing Nebraska in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol from 1937 until 2023, when his statue was replaced with one of Willa Cather. Note the tree at Morton’s back that is part of the statue.
Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read more in her series Statues: The People They Salute visit The Table of Contents and the Facebook Page. (I’ll be adding to the Substack Table of Contents as I transfer the Blog Posts. Please subscribe to this Substack 😊🇺🇸🤓)
Great article!
Love what he did to preserve the necessity of the trees! Had no idea this is how Arbor Day began! Thank you for sharing this piece of important history!