Of English descent, he belonged on his father's side to the seventh, and on his mother's to the sixth, generation of native-born New Englanders.
His father was a well-known bank-note engraver, in whose office Henry mastered the craft while still a boy in school.
From the beginning he had sharp eyes, a cunning hand, and the instinct of workmanship.
For some years he manufactured jewelry; then he became a partner in the retail firm of Crosby, Hunnewell & Morse (later Crosby, Morse & Foss) on Washington Street; on the dissolution of the partnership in 1875 he opened a shop of his own on Tremont, confining himself to a trade in precious stones, and two years later organized the Morse Diamond Cutting Company.
He was the first American to learn the technique of diamond-cutting.
After other cutters had given it over as a bad job, he succeeded in obtaining from it an octahedron, with slightly rounded faces, weighing almost twelve carats.
Years later, when his hand, eye, and brain were at their best, he cut the largest diamond ever handled in the United States, the Tiffany No. 2 of 125 carats, which was reduced to 77 carats in the cutting.
[H. D. Lord, Memorial of the Family of Morse (1896), pp. 340-42; S. C. Cary, John Cary, the Plymouth Pilgrim (1911); Jeweler's Weekly, Jan. 5, 12, 1888; G. F. Kunz, Gems and Precious Stones of North America (1890), pp. 16-17, 316-17; W. R. Cattelle, Precious Stones (1903), pp. 60-61; Boston Daily Advertiser, Jan. 3, 1888; Boston Transcript, Jan. 3, 5, 1888. ]
Morse was married May 22, 1849, to Ann Eliza Hayden, daughter of Ezekiel and Elizabeth (West) Hayden, who with two of their four daughters survived him.
Morse was married May 22, 1849, to Ann Eliza Hayden, daughter of Ezekiel and Elizabeth (West) Hayden, who with two of their four daughters survived him.
Morse, Henry Dutton, (Apr. 20, 1826 - Jan. 2, 1888), Massachusetts 1826 1888 Male Diamond Cutter diamond cutter, was born in Boston, Massachussets, the seventh of the eleven children of Hazen and Lucy (Cary) Morse.
