By Willard H. Morse, M.D.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, in an English country
district, two lads romped on the same lea and chased the same
butterflies. One was a little brown-eyed boy, with red cheeks, fine
round form, and fiery temper. The other was a gentle child, tall, lithe,
and blonde. The one was the son of a man of wealth and a noble lady, and
carried his captive butterflies to a mansion-house, and kept them in a
crystal case. The other ran from the fields to a farm-house, and thought
of the lea as a grain field. It might have been the year 1606, when the
two were called in from their play-ground, and sent to school, thus to
begin life. The farmer's boy went to a common school, and his brown-eyed
play-mate entered a grammar school. From that time their paths were far
apart.
The name of the tall, blonde boy was Samuel Morse. At fifteen he left
school to help his father on the home farm. At twenty he had become
second tenant on a Wiltshire holding, and began to be a prosperous
farmer. Before he had attained the age of forty he was the father of a
large family of children, among them five sons, whose names were Samuel,
William, Robert, John, and Anthony. William, Robert, and Anthony
ultimately emigrated to America, while Samuel, Jr., and John remained in
England. Young Samuel went to London, and became a merchant and a miser.
When past his fiftieth year he married. His wife died four years later,
leaving a baby daughter and a son. Both children were sent up to
Marlboro, where they had a home with their Uncle John, who was living on
the old farm. There they grew up, and became the heirs both of John and
their father. The boy was named Morgan. He received a finished
education, embraced the law, and married. His only child and daughter,
Mary, became the heiress of her aunt's property and her great-uncle
John's estate, and was accounted a lady of wealth, station, and beauty.
Meanwhile, the family of old Samuel Morse's playfellow had also reached
the fourth generation. The name of that playfellow was Oliver Cromwell,
who became Lord Protector of the British Commonwealth. Of course he
forgot Samuel Morse, and was sitting in Parliament when Samuel died. He
had children and grandchildren who lived as contemporaries of his old
playmate's children and grandchildren. Two or three years before
Samuel's great granddaughter, Mary, was born, a great grandson of the
Protector saw the light. This boy was named Oliver, but was called
"Rummy Noll." The ancestral estate of Theodale's became his sole
inheritance, and as soon as he came into the property he began to live a
wild, fast life, distinguishing himself as an adventurous, if not
profligate gentleman.
He travelled much; and one day in a sunny English year came to the town
of his great-grandfather's nativity. There he chanced to meet Mary
Morse. The beautiful girl fascinated him, but would not consent to be
his wife until all of his "wild oats" were sown. Then she became Mrs.
Cromwell, and was a happy wife, as well as a lady of eminence and
wealth. Oliver and Mary Cromwell had a daughter Olivia, who married a
Mr. Russell, and whose daughters are the present sole representatives of
the Protectorate family.
As was said above, William, Anthony, and Robert Morse, brothers of
Samuel, Jr., emigrated to America, and became the ancestors of nearly
all of their name in this country. William and Anthony settled at
Newbury, Massachusetts. The latter became a respected citizen, and among
his descendants were such men as Rev. Dr. James Morse of Newburyport,
Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, Rev. Sidney
Edwards Morse, and others scarcely less notable.
Robert Morse, Anthony's brother, left England at about the time of the
beginning of the civil war, and located in Boston as a tailor. He was a
sterling old Puritan, prudent, enterprising and of strict morality. He
speculated in real estate, and after a while removed to Elizabethtown,
New Jersey, which place he helped to settle, and where he amassed much
wealth. He had nine children. Among his descendants were some men of
eminence, as Dr. Isaac Morse of Elizabethtown, Honorable Nathan Morse of
New Orleans, Isaac E. Morse, long a member of Congress from Louisiana,
Judge Morse of Ohio, and others.
None of these sons of Samuel, the mate of Cromwell, were great men
themselves, but were notable in their descendants. Samuel's descendant
came to represent a historical family; Anthony's greatest descendant
invented the telegraph; and the descendants of Robert were noble
Southrons. William alone of the five brothers had notoriety. Samuel,
Jr., was more eminent, but William made a mark in Massachusetts'
history. Settling in the town of Newbury, William Morse led an humble
and monotonous life. When he had lived there more than forty years, and
had come to be an old and infirm man, he was made to figure unhappily
in the first legal investigation of New England witchcraft. This was
in 1679-81, or more than ten years before the Salem witchcraft, and
it constitutes a page of hitherto unpublished Massachusetts history.
Mr. and Mrs. Morse resided in a plain, wooden house that still stands
at the head of Market Street, in what is now Newburyport. William had
been a farmer, but his sons had now taken the homestead, and he was
supporting himself and wife by shoe-making. His age was almost
three-score-years-and-ten, and he was a reputably worthy man, then just
in the early years of his dotage. His wife, the "goody Elizabeth," was
a Newbury woman, and apparently some few years her husband's senior.
I can easily imagine the worthy couple there in the old square room of
a winter's night. On one side of the fire-place sits the old man in
his hard arm-chair, his hands folded, and his spectacles awry, as he
sonorously snores away the time. Opposite him sits the old lady, a
little, toothless dame, with angular features half hidden in a stiffly
starched white cap, her fingers flying over her knitting-work, as
precisely and perseveringly she "seams," "narrows," and "widens." At the
old lady's right hand stands a cherry table, on which burns a yellow
tallow candle that occasionally the dame proceeds to snuff. There is no
carpet on the floor, and the furniture is poor and plain. A kitchen
chair sits at the other side of the table, and in, or _on_ it, sits
a half-grown boy, a ruddy, freckled, country boy who wants to whistle,
and prefers to go out and play, but who is required to stay in the
house, to sit still, and to read from out the leather-covered Bible that
lies open on the table before him.
"But I would like to go out and slide down hill!" begs the boy.
"Have you read yer ten chapters yit?" asks the old dame.
"N-no!"
"Wal; read on."
And the lad obeys. He is reading aloud; he is not a good reader; the
chapters are in Deuteronomy; but that stint must be performed before
evening; then ten chapters after six o'clock, and at eight he must go to
bed. If he moves uneasily in his chair, or stops to breathe, he is
reprimanded.
The boy was the grandson of the old couple, and resided with them. Under
just such restrictions he was kept. Bright, quick, and full of boy life,
he was restless under the enforced restraint.
In the neighborhood resided a Yankee school-master, named Caleb Powell,
a fellow, who delighted in interfering with the affairs of his
neighbors, and in airing his wisdom on almost every known subject. He
noticed that the Puritan families kept their boys too closely confined;
and influenced by surreptitious gifts of cider and cheese, he interceded
in their behalf. He was regarded as an oracle, and was listened to with
respect. Gran'ther Morse was among those argued with, and being told
that the boy was losing his health by being "kept in" so much, he at
once consented to give him a rest from the Bible readings and let him
play out of doors and at the houses of the neighbors. Once released, the
lad declared that he "should not be put under again." Fertile in
imagination, he soon devised a plan.
At that time a belief in witchcraft was universal, and afforded a
solution of everything strange and unintelligible. The old shoemaker
firmly believed in the supernatural agency of witches, and his roguish
grandson knew it. That he might not be obliged to return to the
Scripture readings, the boy practised impositions on his grandfather to
which the old man became a very easy dupe.
No one suspected the boy's agency, except Caleb Powell. That worthy knew
the young man, and believed that there was nothing marvellous or
superstitious about the "manifestations." Desirous of being esteemed
learned, he laid claim to a knowledge of astrology, and when the
"witchcraft" was the town talk he gave out that he could develope the
whole mystery. The consequence was that he was suspected of dealing in
the black art, and was accused, tried, and narrowly escaped with his
life.