[Illustration: EDES HOUSE, BIRTHPLACE OF PROFESSOR MORSE, CHARLESTOWN, MASS.]
It was, however, quite by accident that the house became doubly famous, for it was during the building of the parsonage, Pastor Morse's proper home, that his little son came to gladden his life. Reverend Jedediah Morse became minister of the First Parish Church on April 30, 1789, the very date of Washington's inauguration in New York as President of the United States, and two weeks later married a daughter of Judge Samuel Breese, of New York. Shortly afterward it was determined to build a parsonage, and during the construction of this dwelling Doctor Morse accepted the hospitality of Mr. Thomas Edes, who then owned the "oldest" house. And work on the parsonage being delayed beyond expectation, Mrs. Morse's little son was born in the Edes house.
Apropos of the brief residence of Doctor Morse in this house comes a quaint letter from Reverend Jeremy Belknap, the staid old doctor of divinity, and the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which shows that girls over a hundred years ago were quite as much interested in young unmarried ministers as nice girls ought ever to be. Two or three months before the settlement of Mr. Morse in Charlestown, Doctor Belknap wrote to his friend, Ebenezer Hazard, of New York, who was a relative of Judge Breese:
"You said in one of your late letters that probably Charlestown people would soon have to build a house for Mr. Morse. I let this drop in a conversation with a daughter of Mr. Carey, and in a day or two it was all over Charlestown, and the girls who had been setting their caps for him are chagrined. I suppose it would be something to Mr. Morse's advantage in point of bands and handkerchiefs, if this report could be contradicted; but if it cannot, oh, how heavy will be the disappointment. When a young clergyman settles in such a town as Charlestown, there is as much looking out for him as there is for a thousand-dollar prize in a lottery; and though the girls know that but one can have him, yet 'who knows but I may be that one?'"[10]
Doctor Morse's fame has been a good deal obscured by that of his distinguished son, but he seems none the less to have been a good deal of a man, and it is perhaps no wonder that the feminine portion of a little place like Charlestown looked forward with decided interest to his settling among them. We can even fancy that the girls of the sewing society studied geography with ardour when they learned who was to be their new minister. For geography was Doctor Morse's passion; he was, indeed, the Alexis Frye of his period. This interest in geography is said to have been so tremendous with the man that once being asked by his teacher at a Greek recitation where a certain verb was found, he replied, "On the coast of Africa." And while he was a tutor at Yale the want of geographies there induced him to prepare notes for his pupils, to serve as text-books, which he eventually printed.