Samuel F.B. Morse

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born on April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of Jedidiah Morse, a pastor who was as well known for his geography as Noah Webster, a friend of the family, was known for his dictionaries.

At Yale College, Morse was an indifferent student, but his interest was aroused by lectures of the newly-developing subject of electricity, and he painted miniature portraits. After college, to the discomfort parents, Morse directed his enthusiasm to painting, which he studied in England. After settling in New York City in 1825, he became one of the most respected painters of his time.

Morse was a very friendly guy. Being a natural leader, he was a founder and the first president of the National Academy of Design, but was lost his campaigns to become mayor of New York or a Congressman. In 1832, while returning on the ship from another period of studying art in Europe, Morse heard a conversation about the newly discovered electromagnet and got the idea of an electric telegraph. He mistakenly thought that the idea of such a telegraph was new, helping to give him the go ahead and push the idea forward. By 1835 he probably had his first telegraph model working in the New York University building where he taught art. Being poor, Morse used materials like an old artist's canvas stretcher to hold his invention, a home-made battery and an old clock-work to move the paper on which dots and dashes were to be recorded.

In 1837 Morse got two partners to help him develop his telegraph. One was Leonard Gale, a quiet professor of science at New York University who taught him how to increase voltage by increasing the number of turns around the electromagnet. The other was Alfred ...

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...Morse was at last able to bring his scattered family together in an ample country home of his own. He bought a house with one hundred acres of land and named it Locust Grove. In 1848, Morse was married a second time to a poor cousin of only 26 years who was deaf and dumb. Morse explained that he chose her in part because she would be dependent on him. Morse's family grew with several more children. In the early 1850's, Morse rebuilt the Locust Grove house in the then popular Italian villa style.

In his later years, Morse attained recognition at home and everywhere else which is seldom accorded a living hero of the arts of peace. As a wealthy man, he was generous in giving funds to colleges, including Yale and Vassar, benevolent societies and to poor artists. He died of pneumonia in New York City on April 2, 1872, at the age of 80. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.