Inventor, Telegraph Pioneer

Gilded Youth.

Born in 1791 to a prominent Federalist and Calvinist family in the Boston area, young Samuel Finley Breese Morse had the best that America could offer and much of the best that Europe could offer as well. Child of a respected clergyman and scholar, young Finley grew up in a loving and supportive family, was educated at Phillips Academy at Andover, and at Yale College mingled with the best and brightest minds in America, including John C. Calhoun, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper. In 1811 he embarked for Europe to study art and portraiture at the Royal Academy in London. London was the artistic and commercial center of the Western world in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and Morse relished the atmosphere of the bustling metropolis. He also worked hard at his craft, winning prizes and the...