The telegrapher's other life

While examining Samuel Morse's life, I began to wonder if I might be related to Samuel F.B. Morse, he of telegraph and code fame. Family Search allows a researcher to determine what relationship s/he has to someone on their family tree, so I looked him up and clicked "View Relationship."

After some thought, my computer returned the result that Morse was related to Sharon. Something like a 5th cousin, four times removed. Good enough. As a reminder, these posts aren't intended to be brags about what famous person belongs to either side of our family but to place an ancestor within their historical context and to learn something not generally contained in the history books we studied long ago. In the process, I often learn a bit of history that has long since escaped my aging memory cells or a bit that would surprise me. 

Such was the case with Morse. It turns out his life can be demarcated by his involvement in two different disciplines. 

He was born in April 1791 in Massachusetts and given the ponderous name of Samuel Finley Breese Morse. The middle names come from his mother's and maternal grandmother's maiden names, his mother being a Breese and his grandmother a Finley. (I knew you'd want to know.)

His father was a Congregationalist minister and was known for his work in American geography and for his book on the subject, which was used as a standard text for years. He was also known for his advocacy on behalf of Native Americans. 

Samuel attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., which continues to this day as an elite educational institution. In the years after its founding, it served to funnel students to Yale University. Samuel's time at Phillips was undistinguished but good enough, along with his father's connection to the school, to be admitted to Yale.

There he showed an interest in the still not quite understood phenomenon of electricity, and apparently much to his parents' chagrin, an interest in art, especially portraiture. After his graduation he intended to try his hand at making a living in art, but his father insisted he join a book publishing firm.

Samuel became the pupil of Washington Allston, a leader in the American Romantic style of landscape painting. His continued interest in art prompted his father to help Samuel join Allston on a trip to England to study art there, and he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art. His first major work, The Dying Hercules gained him some recognition, and he returned to the States with the hope of becoming a professional artist. (View painting at Dying Hercules)

The style of painting he'd learned at the Royal Academy didn't suit American tastes, and he struggled financially. He became an itinerant portraitist, traveling through New England and parts of the South. During this time, he produced a work titled The House of Representatives, which he hoped would put him back on the track he wished to follow but didn't. 

He did, however, land the commission to produce a portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette, whom you'll remember from American Revolutionary history. This work brought his some recognition, which in turn led his to his founding of the National Academy of Design, which infused new life and ideas into American art. 

He returned to Europe in 1829 to study the works of the old masters, culminating in a work titled Gallery of the Louvre, which depicts a number of the museum's famous works. This work also flopped spectacularly in America, loved by the elite but ignored by the general public.(View at Gallery of the Louvre, scroll down to see larger image and explanations of some of the features in the work.)

The beginning of the end of Samuel's art career came when he failed to obtain a commission to paint a mural for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Two events set him on the path that would make him much more widely known in American history, and we'll look at those next time. 

Image: Samuel F.B. Morse in 1872. Photographed by Abraham Bogardus. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, loc.gov'item/2001700119.