 Morrow's father was a Baptist minister and the owner of a farm and of a hotel in Mobile, Alabama.The American Civil War meant that the family lost its slaves and by 1876 the young Morrow was running the hotel, having graduated from Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham at the age of fifteen.Morrow moved west to California in 1879 and began selling stories to "The Argonaut", where Ambrose Bierce was just terminating a two-year period of employment.