After graduation, they booked passage and sailed across the Atlantic to New Orleans. After a brief stay in the big city, they chose to travel up the Mississippi River to the Red River and north to the inland rural township of Shreveport, Louisiana. The business was successful almost from the start. Despite the civil war, reconstruction, and the yellow fever epidemic of 1873, the business thrived through the years as it was handed down from brother to brother to son. At the death of John W. Morris in 1854, it went to brother Thomas H. Morris and at his death in 1887 to son Allen D. Morris.
Early ads indicate they sold firearms and ammunition.
This industry continues today as Sports South, Inc. which is a sister company started in 1970. Up the river about twelve miles from Shreveport was the tiny farm community of Rush Point landing. The Dickson family lived at Rush Point Plantation and were substantial landowners and cotton planters. When Thomas Morris died in 1887, his son, Allen Morris, continued working in the business. In 1899, Allen Morris withdrew to form a new company in Fort Smith, Arkansas, named the Morris-Morton Drug Company.