Designated a separate Congregational parish in 1767 and incorporated as a town in 1859, it was named after native son James Morris, a Yale graduate, Revolutionary War officer, and founder of one of the first co-educational secondary schools in the nation.

In the early 1900s, local water mills, manufactories and other small businesses encountered similar challenges and gave way to industry in nearby Waterbury, Torrington and beyond.

In addition to the two state parks and Bantam Lake, the 4,000-acre (1,600 ha) White Memorial Conservation Center offers a range of opportunities for outdoor sports and recreation.

The Paugussett did not side with more easterly tribes such as the Narragansett and the Wampanoag in King Philip's War (1675–1678), which devastated the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Providence Plantation and Rhode Island.

Europeans began to settle the region in 1715 after John Marsh came from Hartford to what was known as the Greenwoods, the thickly forested part of the colony that corresponded roughly to today's Litchfield County.

[2] Having explored and found friendly inhabitants, Marsh and a partner, John Buell of Lebanon, Connecticut, petitioned the General Assembly for the right to establish a town at "a place called Bantam"—the name possibly a corruption of the Algonquian word Peantum, the Potatuck group who lived in the area.

[4]: 3 Colonial government policies and military action reduced the likelihood of conflict with native groups by 1726, when two European families lived near today's Litchfield-Morris border on a north–south track (now Alain White Road) that was more central to the area.

Between 1747 and 1859, residents of South Farms were involved in sporadic arguments with the town of Litchfield, the colony, and after independence, the state, over control of their religious and civic activities.

South Farms residents had to petition the General Assembly in Hartford for permission to build a meeting house, which would make it possible to avoid the long trip to the center of Litchfield in the winter.

[3]: 5  Instead of ending the friction over local control, this act presaged ongoing arguments about the fair division of payments for the existing Litchfield church as well as about funding for the new meeting house in South Farms and for the four, then five, then six schools there.

Morris considered a calling to the ministry after he graduated from Yale in 1775, but in 1776 he joined the Continental Army instead, fighting at Long Island and White Plains before being captured at the Battle of Germantown in Pennsylvania.

[6]: 28–34 The Morris Academy was one of the new nation's first coeducational secondary schools, "instructing youths…in the higher branches of literature and the sciences together with the Christian precepts of morality and virtue.

[3]: 13–14 Although its location was rural, South Farms in the early 1800s had connections to the outside world not only because of the academy's relatively diverse student body but also because it was part of an active transportation network.

[3]: 14 By 1829, the Great Pond was called Bantam Lake, and local entrepreneurs advertised pleasure cruises and "a small establishment" where ladies and gentlemen could "spend a few hours on and about this beautiful sheet of water.

For a time, the newly built Shepaug Railroad took milk from West Morris to New York City, but dealers there collaborated to lower the prices they paid the farmers and to increase their own profits.

The other main economic driver in 19th- and early 20th-century Morris was its collection of water mills, general stores, and other small businesses, some of which had begun as home industries.

Twenty years later, some farmland had been broken up and developed; for the most part, however, housing was still a mix of Early American structures and newer ones strung loosely along or back from a handful of main roads.

To meet these two challenges, it would have to contend with a third: How would it support desirable development and simultaneously protect the low-key rural character and natural beauty that attracted people in the first place?

Also, high school graduates from Morris—as well as from other Litchfield County towns, generally—were more likely to leave after completing their formal education, both as a result of normal mobility and because of limited job prospects.

[13] By the early 2000s, there were at least three different models of agriculture in Morris: Although the locally-grown movement and specialty markets (hops, e.g.) had created new opportunities, farmers were still squeezed by the availability of cheap goods from outside the area; by the dis-economy of running small or mid-sized operations as equipment, technology, insurance and other costs rose; and by the cost of state health and other regulations, which often failed to reflect the realities of small non-dairy farming.

On the east end of town, meanwhile, investors had purchased a large amount of land, where they planned to build a new hotel and spa, a version of Saratoga, but closer to New York City.

The 590-acre (240 ha) tract included a small slice of land on Bantam Lake, a much larger expanse of field and forest with hiking trails to its south, and a section of wood and wetland to the west, across Route 209.

The northern and eastern parts of Bantam Lake shoreline were Conservancy property, along with 40 miles (64 km) of trails, an education center, a museum and research stations.

The Conservancy's mix of fields, forest, ponds and wetland, as well as the lake and Bantam River, was open to the public for a range of outdoor activities that included hiking, horseback riding, kayaking and cross-country skiing.

Concerned about maintaining the town's scenic, rural character, a group of residents in 2006 created the not-for-profit Morris Land Trust,[19] where conservation easements would permanently limit non-farm development and protect agricultural resources.

The largest acquisition was the 2017 transfer of the 138-acre (56 ha) Farnham farm, which had been in the same family since 1735—an addition made possible by financial support from the Connecticut Farmland Trust.

The property includes "farm fields, stone walls, meandering streams, wetlands, diverse forest habitat, and a portion of the Mattatuck Trail.

The new "upstairs" class of 22 older children faced the same challenge, according to a state inspector—though he noted that the "school is doing a great service to the community," preparing them for successful work at Litchfield High.

[21] In 1918, an inspector observed essentially the same conditions and said that "The difficulty for the teacher does not consist in the number of pupils, it lies … in the fact that there are so many different classes of work (subjects and levels) to teach."

Speaking to the American Nurses Association, she described her childhood in "a little rural New England village, where there were space, clean air, glorious sunsets, starry heavens at night, always a beautiful landscape—a place where fine people lived nobly and without ostentation.