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 Ma...