Edith Morris was born Edith Johnson on August 2, 1906, in Whittier, California. Edith graduated from Whittier College, worked in a settlement house in San Diego, and taught school in Jerome, AZ, before her marriage to attorney Emory L. Morris on February 27, 1932, at the East Whittier Friends Church. Emory Morris was born on September 16, 1901 in Indiana and was a member of the Bloomingdale Friends Meeting in Indiana. The couple moved to San Mateo in 1934, where they remained until 1943, when Emory's service in the U.S. Navy required several relocations. In 1950, the family returned to San Mateo, where Edith lived until her death. She died, at age 90, on Christmas Eve at Hillsdale Manor Convalescent Hospital in San Mateo, after 10 years of suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.
Edith and Emory had three children: Robert, born in San Francisco in 1933, Mary, born in San Mateo in 1936 and Edith Ann, born in 1939.
Edith Morris joined the Palo Alto Meeting on January 23, 1970 by certificate of transfer from the First Friends Church of Whittier, California. She attended Meetings for Worship with her daughter for several years. Later she formed a Worship Group in her home in San Mateo which met monthly. Several people were introduced to Friends worship through those Meetings.
Edith's decades of life in San Mateo included many kinds of service in her community. She was active in the San Mateo chapter of the American Associates of University Women, College of San Mateo advisory committees, Peninsula Halfway House, Mission Hospice, Friends of the Library, American Friends Service Committee, Volunteer Bureau and the Blood Bank. She was also quite active in local politics.
Throughout this involvement in the concerns of her community, Edith studied and acted upon many social issues, including integrated housing, prison reform and nonviolent alternatives to war. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, her convictions led her to participate in nonviolent expressions of civil disobedience.
Despite her absence from our Meeting for Worship for many years, several members remember and appreciate attending the San Mateo Worship Group.