Jonathan Bradley Morse (1835 - 1899)

Born 21 Dec 1835 in Plainfield, Washington, Vermont, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 27 Mar 1899 at age 63 in Utica, Oneida, New York, United States

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Biography

JONATHAN BRADLEY MORSE was born in Montpelier, Vt., in 1834. His parents were of that heoric band, who, leaving all the comforts and assured ease of the East, sought a new home in the then wilderness of Ohio. They settled in Medina county, and their first homes were built of trees, felled to make a clear ing for their crops. The Morse family came of a thinking, sturdy race. In their ranks were found farmers, soldiers, clergymen, inventors and artists. Samuel Breese Morse was the son of a brother of the great grandfather of Mr. Morse. Dr. Asa Bradley was his great grandfather on his mother’s side, and was one of the most noted physicians and surgeons in Connecticut. Asa Brad ley, Jr., fitted for college in the same class with Daniel Webster. Inheriting thus a taste for study, it naturally followed that Mr. Morse became a student himself. He graduated from Oberlin College and afterward from Auburn Theological Seminary. He was extremely versatile, being equally fine in both language and mathematics. He was invited to fill the Chair of Greek in one institution and of Mathematics in another, but declined both, disliking the monotony of teaching. During his ministry of eighteen years his health was very delicate; was a man of positive convictions and ardent temperament; was successful wherever he preached, building up the churches he served, but the soul outwore the body, and he was finally compelled to leave the ministry. He was, from boyhood, always an artist, and his physicians hoped that the outdoor work of an artist might restore his health; for a number of years he was so much improved in health that it seemed as if he might entirely recover. It was not to be, however, and his health gradually failed until 1898, when he died in Utica. He was a successful artist, and his pictures adorn some of the finest homes in America. The sea allured him, and he painted the coast from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia. He was equally successful with landscape, and here his versatile nature was most conspicuous. His skies were always true in color and drawing, and the subtle atmospheric effects of mist and rain, snow and frost, sunshine and shadow he gave to his canvases. Quiet fields, with groups of sheep or cattle, the brown glint of the trout stream, the translucent greens and shadowy depths of the forest he loved to paint. He never cared for human life in his pictures. “Nature alone,” he said. One of his finest pictures was a large water color marine, which was pronounced by critics to be one of the best marine views of the year by any artist. It was the “Grand Cross” of Grand Mcnan at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. It is owned by a gentleman in Boston. Another was “The Old Maid’s Paradise” in oil. A picture of the little cottage on the Downs of Glouscester, East Point. The place was loneliness itself—so lonely that even Elizabeth Stuart Phelps left it after a year. The picture was a low twilight, with a sky suppressed with color brooding over the rolling Downs, with rich russets and greens, and the sea shimmering out to the far horizon. This picture is owned in Cleveland. These are only typical of the many he painted, for he was a very rapid worker. Every picture, however, was first thought out, to the least detail, before brush was put to the canvas, and when he began to paint he knew exactly what he was aiming at.^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Cookinham, Henry J. History of Oneida County, New York: From 1700 to the Present Time, Volume 1, Part 2. Oneida County, New York: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912. Google, Google Books, pp, 544-545, https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Oneida_County_New_York/zcspAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA544&dq=jonathan+bradley+morse

• Susan D. (Pouch) Burns, Pedigree/Ancestor Chart, March 16, 1985, copies of which are in the possession of her daughters.