Alfred Morrison Lay (May 20, 1836 - December 8, 1879) was a U.S. Representative from Missouri.
Born in Lewis County, Missouri, Lay moved with his parents to Benton County in 1842. He attended private schools, and was graduated from Bethany College, Virginia (now in West Virginia), in 1856. He studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1857 and commenced practice in Jefferson City, Missouri. He was appointed United States district attorney for the western district of Missouri by President Buchanan and served until his resignation in 1861. Enlisted as a private in the Missouri State Guard and was subsequently promoted to the rank of major. He returned to Missouri when the command disbanded. He served as captain of ordnance, Confederate States Army. He resumed the practice of law in Jefferson City, Missouri. He served as member of the State constitutional convention in 1875.
Lay was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-sixth Congress and served from March 4, 1879, until his death in Washington, D.C., on December 8, 1879. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery, Jefferson City, Missouri.
Famous quotes containing the words morrison and/or lay:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)