[1] Morris and the astronomer Maria Mitchell were the first women elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1850.

Trained by tutors, including Thomas Nuttall, Thomas Say, and Charles Alexandre Lesueur, the Morris sisters, especially Margaretta and her botanist sister Elizabeth Carrington Morris, became a part of the larger nineteenth-century scientific community.

The sisters were part of a network that included Asa Gray, William Darlington, Thaddeus William Harris, Louis Agassiz, Dorethea Dix, Mary Roberdeau, and Isabella Batchelder James, with whom they shared specimens and findings.

They are incorporated in the Littell family papers, currently held in the special collections of the library of the University of Delaware.

[9] Morris provided botanical illustrations for a paper by William Gambel in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences (1848)[8][10]