Morse, Sidney Edwards, , Massachusetts 1794 1871 Male Author Inventor inventor and author, was born in Charlestown, Massachussets, the second son of Jedidiah [q. v. ] and Elizabeth Ann (Breese) Morse.
The charge of plagiarism brought against his father by Hannah Adams [q. v. ] caused him to publish Remarks on the Controversy between Dr. Morse and Miss Adams, together with Some Notice of the Review of Dr. Morse's Appeal, of which two editions appeared at Boston in 1814.
On Apr. 1, 1841, he married Catharine Livingston, daughter of Rev. Gilbert R. Livingston of Philadelphia, and to them were born one son and one daughter.
Education
He was graduated A. B. at Yale in 1811, and studied law at Tapping Reeve's law school in Litchfield, Connecticut Fresh from college, he set forth his views on the growing preponderance of the South in national affairs in a series of twelve articles signed "Massachusetts, " published in the Columbian Centinel of Boston, beginning Dec. 30, 1812.
Morse left it after about a year to enter Andover Theological Seminary, where he studied from 1817 to 1820.
Career
These were reprinted as The New States, or a Comparison of the .
Northern and Southern States; with a View to Expose the Injustice of Erecting New States at the South (1813).
On Jan. 3, 1816, the first number of the Recorder appeared at Boston, with a prospectus written by Morse setting forth its hopes and ideals.
Accompanied by an Atlas, published at New Haven in 1822.
About 1835 (Prefatory note to The Cerographic Atlas of the United States, 1842) he began experimenting, with Henry A. Munson, on a new method of printing maps with the letterpress of a book instead of issuing them as plates engraved on metal, wood, or stone.
He kept the process a secret, but it obviously consisted of engraving on wax and from the wax engraving making a plate to be inserted into the form with the type; the process probably utilized the principles of electrotyping, which had been introduced in 1840.
A large man of sedentary habits, Morse retained his native strength until he was well along in years.
He had a mathematical and statistical mind which found pleasure in the most abstruse, perplexing, and extended calculations.
After his death a controversy arose as to whether he or Nathaniel Willis deserved the credit for establishing the Recorder as the first religious newspaper (see Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872, pp. 289-95; also letters in the New York Evening Post, Jan. 16, 22, 29, Feb. 15, 22, 1872).
Besides the works mentioned above Sidney Edwards Morse was the author of An Atlas of the United States (1823); A Geographical View of Greece, and an Historical Sketch of the Recent Revolution in that Country (1824); North American Atlas (1842); The Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842 - 45), The Cerographic Bible Atlas (1844), and The Cerographic Missionary Atlas (1848), the last three being issued as supplements to the Observer; A System of Geography for the Use of Schools (1844); A Geographical, Statistical and Ethical View of the American Slaveholders' Rebellion (1863); Memorabilia in the Life of Jedidiah Morse (1867).
[H. D. Lord, Memorial of the Family of Morse (1896); obituary notice in the N. Y. Observer, Dec. 28, 1871; F. B. Dexter, Biog.
Sketches Grads.
Yale Coll. , vol.
VI (1912), with bibliog.
of Morse's publications; Obit.
Record Grads.
Politics
The paper long remained a Boston institution, maintaining its identity until 1867 when it merged with the Congregationalist.
Interests
Music & Bands
With Samuel Iren'us Prime [q. v. ] he made it an influential instrument in Protestant evangelical circles for many years.
Connections
In 1820 he had worked with his father in revising the latter's Geography, and father and son joined in editing A New System of Modern Geography .
Father:
Jeremiah
He definitely cast his lot with the newspaper world when his father and Jeremiah Evarts q.v., editor of the Boston religious monthly, the Panoplist, suggested the establishment of a religious newspaper.
Brother:
Samuel
On Oct. 3, 1817, Sidney Morse, with his brother Samuel F. B. Morse q.v., had been granted a patent for a device for "raising and forcing water and other fluids," usually referred to as "a flexible piston pump."
Brother:
Richard
In 1823, with his younger brother, Richard Cary Morse, he moved to New York to establish the New York Observer, a religious paper of the same type as the Boston Recorder, the first number appearing May 17.
