Biography of Marshall Morse

	This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated
 	compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography,
	including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and 
	representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & 
	Co., Chicago, 1898. Pages 388-389

	Scan and OCR by Joy Fisher, 1997. This file may be copied for non-profit 
	purposes. All other rights reserved. 


MARSHALL MORSE, an esteemed citizen of Brookings, South Dakota, now 
living in well-merited retirement, was born at Breadport, Addison 
county, Vermont, September 16, 1818, a son of John Sherman and Lois 
(Smith) Morse. John S. Morse was a native of Connecticut. His father, 
Levi Morse, was a farmer of Litchfield, Connecticut, where he lived and 
died. He is supposed to have been of Scotch lineage. While yet a young 
man John S. Morse removed to Vermont, where he lived on a farm, but 
afterward returned to Connecticut, and, in 1826, to St. Lawrence 
county, New York, where he died in 1844 at the age of sixty-two years. 
Mrs. Lois Morse died in Vernon township, Waukesha county, Wisconsin, 
about 1852, at the age of seventy-two years. She was also a native of 
Connecticut.

	Marshall Morse, the subject of this sketch, is the only survivor 
of his father's family of nine children. He was reared on a farm in St. 
Lawrence county, New York, and about 1838 moved to Milwaukee county, 
Wisconsin. A year or two later he returned to New York, was married and 
drove with a team again to Wisconsin and lived near Mukwonago for 
several years. Later he lived in Manitowoc, Winnebago, Shawno and Green 
counties, Wisconsin. For a number of years he was interested in 
lumbering in northern Wisconsin and later carried on a lumber yard at 
Brodhead. Having accumulated about twenty thousand dollars in that 
industry, he came to Dakota, settled in Flandreau, then a frontier 
village, where he carried on a gun store about ten years. In the spring 
of 1887 he moved to Brookings, where he has since lived in retirement, 
finding recreation in the care of his garden, which he tends with 
scrupulous care. He also owns a farm near Brookings.

	Mr. Morse was first married in 1844 to Miss Albina Hollemback, 
daughter of William Hollemback, of St. Lawrence county, New York. Mrs. 
Morse died at Brodhead, Wisconsin, in January, 1868, at the age of 
forty-eight years, leaving three children, viz: Mary, wife of T. H. 
Brown, Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Arthur W., a fruit grower near 
Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Charles M., employed by a prominent 
wholesale house in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Morse was married a second 
time in 1872 to Mrs. Catherine Conat, widow of James J. Conat, who is 
the mother of one daughter by her first marriage, viz: Anna, wife of W. 
H. Cornell, of Brookings. Mrs. Morse was born in Hesse Darmstadt, 
Germany, and at the age of two and a half years came to America with her 
parents, George Phillip and Margaret Elizabeth (Koppas) Workman. Mr. and 
Mrs. Workman first settled in St. Lawrence county, New York, and later 
moved to Spring Valley, Rock county, Wisconsin, being among the pioneers 
of that county.

	Mr. and Mrs. Morse are members of the Methodist church of 
Brookings. In politics, Mr. Morse is a lifelong Republican, and remembers 
the campaign of 1840, although did not vote at that election. While living 
at Flandreau he served two terms as county treasurer of Moody county. He was 
postmaster at Angelica, Shawno county, Wisconsin, and later at Flandreau. Mr. 
Morse may be truly called a self-made man. He left home at twenty-one years 
of age with twenty-five cents in his pocket, and unable to write his own 
name, but he managed to attend a night school for nine evenings and by 
self application and observation gained his knowledge and has ever since 
transacted all his own clerical business and kept his own accounts so 
that his success may be attributed entirely to his own energy and 
perseverance.