History of the Captain John O. Morse and his House

John Osborn Morse was born on May 22,1800 in Edgartown, Massachusetts. He was the second of eight children born to Uriah Morse and Prudence Fisher Morse.   John 0. was 5 feet 6 inches tall with a light complexion and brown hair.  It is no surprise that he became a sailor.  He was raised in Edgartown on the island Maratha's Vineyard surrounded by the sea and maritime life.  His father was Uriah Morse, was from Beaufort, North Carolina, and was a cooper and shipwright.  Three of his four brothers who survived to adulthood were known to be mariners at one time or another in their lives.

John 0. married twice.  His first marriage was to Joanna Pease, daughter of Marshall Pease and Elizabeth Vincent.  They were married in Edgartown on December 7, 1823 and had 3 daughters, Sally Mirick, Sarah M., and Elizabeth Pease.  Joanna died on September 30, 1833 while John 0. was at sea.  After his return on November 4, 1834, John 0. was married again to Mary Smith, daughter of Ebenezer Smith and Mary Hulsart.  They had seven children: Joanna P., John Osbom, James L., Jennie C., Josiah Gorham, Mary H. and an unnamed baby daughter who died in infancy.

Life At Sea
John 0. spent a large part of his adult life at sea.  The first record we have of his maritime adventures is a crew listing of unknown position on the ship, HECTOR, which sailed to the Pacific Ocean whaling grounds and was gone from New Bedford from August, 1826 to April, 1829. Two months afier his retum to New England, he again sailed out of New Bedford on the HECTOR, this time as her captain.  (See the table for information about his whaling  endeavors as a ship's captain.  All of these vessels went to the Pacific Ocean whaling grounds.

"In October 1832, the ship HECTOR of New Bedford, Capt. John 0. Morse, then ninety days from port, "raised'' a whale, and lowered for him.  But while the crew were proposing offensive operations, the whale himself took the initiative, and just as the harpoon struck him he struck the mate's boat, staving it badly.  By drawing        sails under her and bailing, the boat was kept afloat and the attack resumed.  In the mean time Captain Morse came to his assistance, and the mate warned him of the character of his antagonist, but  Captain Morse told him he had a long lance and he wanted to try it. Accordingly the Captain advanced to the whale, which immediately turned, and taking the Captain's boat in his mouth*, held it on end and shook it to pieces in a moment.  Not satisfied with this he chewed up the boat-kegs and whatever appurtenances to, or pieces of the boat came in his way.  The mate now offered to pick a crew and boat, and renew the fight, to which suggestion the captain assented, and with the best and most experienced men of the crew, Mr. Norton again essayed to capture the wrecker of boats.  As the mate's boat again approached, the whale again assumed the offensive, and the order was given to  "stem all'' for their lives.  For half a mile or more the chase continued, the crew striving, as only men in a desperate situation can strive, to keep clear of the enraged whale, which followed them so closely as several times to bring hisjaws together within 6 or 8 inches of the head of the boat.  By watching his chance, as the monster became exhausted and turned to spout, Mr. Norton succeeded in burying his lance in the whale's vitals, killing him almost instantly. On cutting him in, two irons were found belonging to ship BARCLAY, and it was afterward ascertained that about three months before the first mate of the
BARCLAY had lost his life in an encounter with him.  He made ninety  barrels of oil.  Mr. Norton mentioned this as the first instance within his knowledge where a whale attacked a boat before being struck.''

(*In attacking a boat the sperm whale will sometimes tum upon his back, resuming his natural position to breathe.)

Edgartown
From  1840 to 1845, John 0. took a break from whaling to establish himself at home, in Edgartown.  He was engaged in many land transactions.  He purchased land near the waterfront and built a large house with porch that overlooked the harbor.  The house is still standing on the corner of North Water Street and Morse Street.

Vineyard Mining Company
When news hit Edgartown of the gold found in California, it stirred the islanders' imagination. In 1849, several ships sailed from Martha's Vineyard to California.  John 0. organized one of those expeditions. He purchased an old bark named SARAH in Warren, Rhode Island.  With several other leaders of Edgartown's community, he formed the Vineyard Mining Company and they outfitted the bark to take its members to California. On September 3, 1849, the SARAH left Edgartown to much fanfare.  Forty-four ofthe 52 on board were from Martha's Vineyard.  One of the passengers, William Pent, kept a log of the voyage to Californiathat you can view in the online archives of the Library of Congress or through the Mystic Seaport's online collection at the following link:

The SARAH arrived in San Francisco and discharged its crew on April 16, 1850 after a harrowing passage around Cape Hom and visits to several South American ports. After being in California for less than a year, John 0. decided to take the SARAH for a short whaling cruise.  He died on this trip.  His last entry into his journal was made on February 24, 1851 where he states "Commences with fine weather, wind SW,steering by to the SSE, the boat having returning a favorable report.'' At this point, he was at the island of Gorgona,  off Colombia. He was taken sick off the SARAH and left to recover in Paiti, Peru.  Captain Henry Pease reports that he died there of dropsy on May 27, 1851. There is a memorial stone for him in the Memorial Grounds Cemetery of Edgartown.

Special Thanks to
Ricardo Rain, Marcia Morse Mullins and Catherine Mayhew

Bibliography
Banks, Charles Edward.  The History of
Martha 's Vineyard, Dukes County,
Massachusetts. Volume 3: Family Genealogies.
Edgartown: Dukes County Historical Society,
1966.
Crew Lists.  Whaling Collection Archives.   New
Bedford Library.
Deeds and Documents   Edgartown Town Hall
Records, MA.
Railton, Arthur R.  Walking Tour of Historic
Edgartown.  Edgartown: Martha's Vineyard
Historical Society, 1986.
New Bedford Mercury (New Bedford, MA'
Volume 29, issue 6 and 20.
Starbuck, Alexander.  History of the American
Whale Fishery. NY: Argosy-Antiquarian, 1964
[reprint]·
Vineyard Gazette (Edgartown, MA)     1 Jul 185
and 26 Jul 1985.
Vital Records ofEdgartown, Massachusetts, to
the year 1850. Boston: NEHGS, 1906.

Notes by Platt Johnson
Has spent summers in the house from 1955

Captain John O. Morse, for whom the street and home are named kept his ships at the foot of Morse Street. It is easy to imagine him strolling out of the front door of his home and walking the 200 feet down to the water to view his ship and gaze out to sea. His father was a cooper and the building across the street might have been one of the families holdings back when it was a store.

He was Married twice, first to Joann Pease December 7th, 1823 in Edgartown. Captain Morse remarried when she passed away and enlarged his family. He married Mary Smith October 3, 1834 in Edgartown and had several children. The house was quite large and listed these members of the household in an 1850 census:

His principle boat was the Hector. He is noted on page 291 of "The story of New England Whalers" by John Randolph Spears as having been in a whaleboat off the Azores when a sperm whale attacked his mates boat and then his boat. Morse's boat was crushed and he and his crew thrown into the water. He was rescued by the other boat commanded by his mate Mr. Norton. They then were pursued by the whale and barely survived numerous charges before finally killing the whale. Full Story Here For this and other reasons the Hector was known as the luckiest whaling ship afloat. He is also listed as being the master of the sailing ship R. R. Cuyler.

In the fall of 1849 John Morse and some like-minded individuals “took our departure from the wharf with fifty three souls all told on a voyage off gold hunting.” They rounded the Horn with some difficulty (according to a later account they suffered damage which was repaired by a single brave crewman). The Captain faced down an insubordinate seaman, and they reached San Francisco in March 1850. One of the passengers, William Pent, kept a log of the voyage to California that you can view in the online archives of the Library of Congress or through the Mystic Seaport's online collection at the following link:

Whaling was never far from Morse’s mind, however, and he departed on a whaling voyage the following December. He sailed to central America, taking some blackfish and almost losing the second mate, stopped at the Galapagos Islands, then put in at Paita, Peru where he died. The ship resumed it's whaling and changed hands in July 1851, from Callao, because (again, according to a later source) a man named Stephen Kidder Raymond took over. The ship continued blackfishing and sperm whaling off Peru with some success, occasionally going ashore for refreshment, until Jan. 28, 1852, when the ships log ends, with the ship headed north along the coast. There is a receipt from the gold field, sent home in March, 1850. A second shows that, upon his demise that Morse had $1449, which was sent home, so he must have had some success in San Francisco.

Many people lived in the home including a mixed native American from the Chappaquiddick Plantation, Sarah Brown who married William Martin, the only African American whaling Master from Martha's Vineyard.

History of whaling by Starbuck. Starbuck's Neck is just down the road from the house.

Details above are from from http://www.tenpound.com/169/51.html

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