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By Root 1549 0

at Locust Grove, whom they named Samuel Arthur Breese Morse, Cornelia Livingston Morse, and William Goodrich Morse. As children of his old age, Morse looked on them as unmerited gifts from heaven: “My own unworthiness seemed more than ever great, so great that I was tempted to cry out, Why is all this to me a sinner?” Much as he enjoyed hearing their cheerful voices, however, he cautioned Sarah not to make them playthings: “Remember they have souls, and these are infinitely valuable, while the perishing body, though to be suitably cared for, is in comparison utterly worthless.” He attended personally to their religious training, as he had done with his first brood, and as Jedediah and Elizabeth had done with him. In language that by now had passed through several generations of Morses, he set out for them the doctrine of original sin, the quintessential importance of the Bible as God’s revealed Word, and the superiority of Christianity to other religions.

Morse’s children by Lucrece had become adults without ever having lived with their father. But now, for the first time in twenty years, he was able to have all of them around him, at least temporarily. Charles moved into Locust Grove for a while with his pretty wife, Manette. Morse had given them $5000 in Magnetic company stock as a wedding present, and Charles said that he counted himself blessed to have “such a kind and affectionate father.” The young man felt down, however. He had quit Yale to take up farming, but had given up that fancy and now was having trouble finding work. Lucrece’s deceased brother had left him some money, which he apparently misspent.

Alexander Jackson Davis, plan for Morse home at Locust Grove (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Morse had little sympathy for his son’s floundering. He thought Charles talented, but disorganized and careless with money, a soft touch for “any plausibly spoken man.” Charles had thrown away hundreds of dollars—“and if he had millions it would be the same.” He therefore refused to help Charles out financially. At the same time he contributed $1000 to Yale, but that was a different matter, he told Charles, a “religious duty.” He intended, he added, to spend his money on “benevolent purposes” and Charles “should rejoice at such a prospect.” As for the future disposition of his estate, he planned to keep a close watch on his son: “it will depend on his acquirement of safe habits, whether I leave him anything.”

Finley, too, lived for a while at Locust Grove, working the farm, fishing, being helpful. Twenty-five years old, he missed his uncle Sidney, who for most of his life had served as a stand-in father. To Morse, Finley seemed a sort of sacred fool, handicapped by his condition but also elevated by it. “There is no improvement in the character of his mind, and I despair of ever seeing any,” Morse wrote, “but this affliction comes with so many alleviations of … docility, moral if not religious principle, health &c., that it is scarcely an affliction.” Lucrece’s brother had apparently left money for Finley, too. Morse planned to invest it in the Locust Grove farm, paying his son interest while making certain that he would always have a home.

Susan—“my ancient daughter,” Morse called her—remained in Arroyo, Puerto Rico, sending monkeys as gifts for his new children. But she visited Locust Grove annually, bringing his grandson, also named Charles, who to his delight showed an aptitude for drawing. At thirty, the daughter who had spent her childhood longing to be with him was now two years older than his wife. Her life in Puerto Rico seems to have been often unhappy. Contending with ants and lizards that chewed her plants, she referred to the island as “this horrid place.” Her husband, Edward, had established a distillery to make puncheons of rum. But he met with uneven success, rich one moment, poor the next. Probably to help out, Morse gave Susan $10,000 worth of telegraph stock. On one annual visit he took her to the Catskill Mountain House, a well-known resort. She was thin and in poor health, and he hoped the excursion