Ephraim W. Morse Family Papers

Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego

9500 Gilman Drive

La Jolla 92093-0175

spcoll@ucsd.edu

URL: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/sca/index.html

Descriptive Summary

Contributing Institution: Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego

9500 Gilman Drive

La Jolla 92093-0175

Title: Ephraim W. Morse Family Papers

Creator: Morse family

Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0689

Physical Description: 4 Linear feet (9 archive boxes and 6 oversize folders)

Date (inclusive): 1838 - 1907

Abstract: The Ephraim W. Morse family papers (1838-1907) document the private and public life of an important San Diego pioneer, businessman, merchant, and civic leader. The papers include family and general correspondence, documenting the concerns of 19th-century life both in New England and California.

Languages: English .

Scope and Content of Collection

The Ephraim W. Morse family papers document the personal, business, and civic life of a San Diego pioneer, merchant, and civic leader and provides a glimpse into his political, social, and financial life, as well as his relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. Largely comprising correspondence from 1849 to 1906, it includes letters from many of San Diego's earliest and most important pioneers including Alonzo Horton, Joseph Judson Ames, Manuelito Cota, Rufus King Porter, Judge James Robinson, Jonathan T. Warner, and Thomas Whaley, as well as family members. Because Morse was a storekeeper, lawyer, and express agent, people wrote to him about a variety of issues of concern to those living in or passing through San Diego in the 1850s-1860s period. The collection also contains biographical materials such as various civic office notifications, certificates, and oaths; economic transaction materials regarding the Massachusetts farm and woodlands inherited from his father; educational materials and juvenilia including his bookkeeping exercise ledgers; high school report cards; diaries and notebooks; and books he carried to California on his sea voyage around Cape Horn in 1849. The business and legal documents include memorandum, receipts, notes, correspondence, inventories, appraisals, private notes and account records; California materials include campaign materials of early San Diego city and county; subscription lists; county statistics; surveys, and newspaper clippings.

Arranged in seven series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, 2) EDUCATION AND JUVENILIA, 3) DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS, 4) MISCELLANEOUS MATERIALS, 5) CORRESPONDENCE, 6) BUSINESS AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS, and 7) CALIFORNIA MATERIALS.

Biography

Ephraim Weed Morse was born on October 16, 1823, in West Amesbury, Massachusetts, the only son of New England farmers and apple growers, John and Hannah (nee Weed) Morse. He attended Newburyport High School (1838-1841) where he learned bookkeeping. Leaving New England and a teaching position, at age twenty-six, Morse joined the Gold Rush to northern California. He quickly became sick and disenchanted with his prospects so, in April of 1850, he ventured to the tiny settlement of San Diego, population approximately 800.

Morse, with fellow New Englander, Levi Slack, immediately began keeping a general store, first, in a failed "new town" location known as "Davis' Folly." In 1853, he moved the store to Old Town and partnered with Thomas Whaley, and later, conducted business on his own. During the early decades of the city, being an educated and temperate man, he was called upon to hold many important government positions including city trustee (1854-55, 1867), county supervisor (1860), city treasurer (1878), county treasurer (1858-59, 1861-1862), associate justice (1852), secretary of the board of trade (1852-1864), school commissioner and trustee (1853-55), and public administrator (1853, 1875). In 1856, he earned his license to practice law and became a notary public.

In 1860, he experienced financial losses and bankruptcy and for a short time partnered with Joseph Smith on a sheep ranch on Smith Mountain, now known as Palomar. He soon returned to San Diego (1861) as a merchant, real estate speculator, county surveyor, and an agent for Wells Fargo and various insurance companies. With Thomas Darnell, he unprofitably invested in the Jesus María Copper Mine in Baja California.

Morse had returned to Massachusetts in 1851 to marry his first wife, Lydia Gray. Mrs. Morse arrived in San Diego in 1853, gave birth to their son Edward in 1856, and died shortly thereafter. The boy was then taken to Massachusetts by a Mrs. Stevens, where he was raised by his maternal grandparents.

In 1866, Morse married Mary C. Walker, a former San Diego schoolteacher. She was removed from that position when some parents boycotted the school because of comments that she was rumored to have made after negative reactions to her sharing a meal with an African-American woman. Although Miss Walker denied commenting on the interracial marriages of some of her critics, she was dismissed due to the boycott. She then was hired by Rufus Porter, a Spring Valley pioneer, to teach his daughter until her marriage to Morse.

The Morses were happily matched and enjoyed driving their horse and buggy far out into the San Diego county wilderness, visiting the mountains and local hot springs on camping trips. They both gardened and reveled in growing fruits and flowers year-round in the excellent climate. Mary wrote articles that were published in the newspaper. Their marriage lasted for thirty-three years until Mary Morse's death on May 17, 1899.

In 1869, Morse was one of the City trustees who sold Alonzo Horton the land grant that would become "Horton's Addition" or "New Town," the present site of downtown San Diego. He was also instrumental in getting the City trustees to dedicate a large plot of land to be reserved for a city park, now Balboa Park. In 1871, he travelled to Washington, D.C., to fight for the City's title rights to the original "pueblo lands."

Morse was involved in many of the attempts to bring a transcontinental railroad to San Diego. As a real estate speculator, he wanted to make the City easy and affordable for new settlers to reach. In 1854, he was a founder and director of the San Diego and Gila, Southern Pacific and Atlantic Railroad Company, which eventually failed. He was also involved in citizen's committees and in arrangements to reserve private land for railroad right-of-ways. He worked with Col. Thomas A. Scott to bring the Texas & Pacific Railroad to San Diego, a project that garnered Congressional support. However, all these efforts were successfully opposed by the powerful influence and money of the Central Pacific Group that included Leland Stanford, Colis P. Huntington, Charles Crock and Mark Hopkins. San Diego County would not become a terminus for a major transcontinental line until 1885.

Morse's other business interests included being a founder and officer of the Bank of San Diego. He helped develop downtown San Diego, building the Pierce-Morse block located at the northwest corner of Sixth and F Street, and the Morse, Whaley, and Dalton block. With Whaley, Dalton, and Noell, he was involved in various real estate firms, and he invested in both the San Diego Flume Company and the El Cajon Valley Company.

The failure to bring a transcontinental railroad to San Diego, in addition to national financial panics, such as the panic of 1873, caused Morse to lose most of his fortune. Like many San Diegans, he was land-rich but cash-poor, and land prices were not rising. He and Mary retreated to spartan living conditions in a small house in Alpine, a small foothill community twenty-five miles east of San Diego, while renting out their homestead in San Diego. The Bank of San Diego went into receivership and Morse was the subject of lawsuits due to his involvement with it for many years to come.

Morse continued to live in San Diego until he was eighty-three years of age. He died on January 17, 1906, having finally witnessed substantial city growth, just as he had always optimistically predicted it.

Publication Rights

Digital copies of this material are intended to support research, teaching, and private study. This work may be used without prior permission. The original manuscripts for this collection are held by Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library.

Preferred Citation

Ephraim W. Morse Family Papers, MSS 689. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Acquisition Information

Acquired 2007.

Digital Content

This collection has been digitized.

Items available online

Related Materials

Ephraim W. Morse Papers, MSS 79. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Processing Information

This collection was digitized in 2016 for inclusion in the Adam Matthew subscription database Frontier Life: borderlands, settlement & colonial encounters.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

Businessmen -- California -- San Diego -- Correspondence

Railroads -- California, Southern

San Diego (Calif.) -- History

Morse, E. W. (Ephraim W.), 1820-1906 -- Archives

Ames, John Judson, 1821-1861 -- Correspondence

Morse, Edward W. -- Correspondence

Darnall, Thomas Rylan -- Correspondence

Horton, Alonzo E., 1813-1909 -- Correspondence

Whaley, Thomas, 1823-1890 -- Correspondence

Chase, A. J. -- Correspondence

BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS

Scope and Content of Series

Series 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS: Contains appointment and commission notifications and signed oaths for various civic positions (1852-1878) Morse held, business cards, his certificate to practice law, various personal legal documents, documentation of his personal and economic interests in the Massachusetts family farm, invitations, reference letters, and spiritualist session notes. The materials are arranged alphabetically.

Box 1, Folder 1

Appointments, commissions and notices of election 1852-1853

Appointments, commissions and notices of election