James Turner Morehead, Kentucky's most scholarly governor, was born
near Shepherdsville, Kentucky, May 24, 1797. He was prepared for
Transylvania University, Lexington, and there he studied from 1813 to
1815. He studied law under John J. Crittenden and, in 1818, entered
upon the practice at Bowling Green, Kentucky. Ten years later Morehead
was in the Kentucky legislature, and he was returned for several
sessions. In 1832 he was a delegate to the Baltimore convention which
nominated Henry Clay for the presidency; and while in Baltimore he
himself was nominated for lieutenant-governor of Kentucky, with John
Breathitt for governor. They were elected in August, 1832, but the
Governor died on February 21, 1834, and Morehead succeeded to his
office on the following day. He served until September, 1836. Upon the
expiration of his term, Governor Morehead resumed the practice of law
at Frankfort. He was elected United States Senator from Kentucky, in
1841, and he served until 1847. Senator Morehead was an attractive
public speaker, and when it was known in Washington that he was to
make a speech the galleries were usually well filled. After the
expiration of his term, he practiced law at Covington, Kentucky.
Senator Morehead had the most extensive collection of books and
manuscripts upon the history of Kentucky and the West of any man of
his day and generation. After his death, which occurred at Covington,
Kentucky, December 28, 1854, his library was purchased by the Young
Men's Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati. Morehead's
_Address in Commemoration of the First Settlement of Kentucky, at
Boonesborough_ (Frankfort, 1840, 181 pp.), rescued and preserved
numerous documents of great historical importance. In the preparation
of his great _History of the United States_, George Bancroft is said
to have relied upon this famous address of Morehead for much of his
information concerning the early history of the West. Morehead also
published _Practice and Proceedings at Law in Kentucky_ (1846). The
fine face of this scholar and statesman is one of Matthew Harris
Jouett's most luminous canvasses.[7]
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _History of Kentucky_, by R. H. Collins (Covington,
Kentucky, 1882); Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_
(New York, 1888, v. iv); _National Cyclopaedia of American
Biography_ (New York, 1906, v. xiii).