The American Morgans According to Herbert Marshall Lloyd, an attorney and editor of Morgan's works, Lewis was descended from James Morgan, a
Welsh pioneer. Various sources record that James and his brothers, Miles and John, the three sons of William Morgan of
Llandaff, Glamorganshire, left Wales for
Boston in 1636. From there John Morgan went to Virginia, Miles to
Springfield, Massachusetts, and James to
New London, Connecticut.
Early life and education In 1797,
Jedediah Morgan (1774–1826) married Amanda Stanton, settling on a 100-acre gift of land from his father. After she had five children and died, Jedediah married Harriet Steele of Hartford, Connecticut. They had eight more children, including Lewis. As an adult, he adopted the middle initial "H." Morgan later decided that this H, if anything, stood for "Henry". At his death in 1826, Jedediah left 500 acres with herds and flocks in trust for the support of his family. This provided for education as well. Morgan studied classical subjects at Cayuga Academy:
Latin,
Greek,
rhetoric and mathematics. His father had bequeathed money specifically for his college education, after giving land to the other children for their occupations. Morgan chose
Union College in
Schenectady. Due to his work at Cayuga Academy, Morgan finished college in two years, 1838–1840, graduating at age 22. The curriculum continued study of classics combined with science, especially mechanics and optics. Morgan was strongly interested in the works of the French naturalist
Georges Cuvier.
Eliphalet Nott, the president of Union College, was an inventor of stoves and a boiler; he held 31 patents. A
Presbyterian minister, he kept the young men under a tight discipline, forbidding alcoholic beverages and requiring students to get permission to go to town. He held up the Bible as the one practical standard for all behavior. His career ended with some notoriety when he was investigated by the state for attempting to raise funds for the college through a lottery. The students evaded his strict regime by founding secret (and forbidden)
fraternities, such as the
Kappa Alpha Society. Lewis Morgan joined in 1839.
The New Confederacy of the Iroquois , the building was not used for freemasonry from 1827 to 1846. The Gordian Knot met on the second floor in the early 1840s. In 1847 the Scipio Lodge #110 started Masonic activities again. After graduating in 1840, Morgan returned to Aurora to read the law with an established firm. In 1842 he was admitted to the
bar in
Rochester, where he went into partnership with a Union classmate,
George F. Danforth, a future judge. They could find no clients, as the nation was in an economic depression, which had started with the
Panic of 1837. Morgan wrote essays, which he had begun to do while studying law, and published some in
The Knickerbocker under the pen name Aquarius. On January 1, 1841, Morgan and some friends from Cayuga Academy formed a secret fraternal society which they called the
Gordian Knot. As Morgan's earliest essays from that time had classical themes, the club may have been a kind of literary society, as was common then. In 1841 or 1842 the young men redefined the society, renaming it the Order of the
Iroquois. Morgan referred to this event as cutting the knot. In 1843 they named it the Grand Order of the Iroquois, followed by the New Confederacy of the Iroquois. The men intended to resurrect the spirit of the Iroquois. They tried to learn the languages, assumed Iroquois names, and organized the group by the historic pattern of Iroquois tribes. In 1844 they received permission from the former
Freemasons of Aurora to use the upper floor of the
Masonic temple as a meeting hall. New members underwent a secret rite called
inindianation in which they were transformed spiritually into Iroquois. They met in the summer around campfires and paraded yearly through the town in costume. Morgan seemed infused with the spirit of the Iroquois. He said, "We are now upon the very soil over which they exercised dominion ... Poetry still lingers around the scenery. ..." These new Iroquois retained a literary frame of mind, but they intended to focus on "the writing of a native American epic that would define national identity".
Encounter with the Iroquois , upstate New York After the
Revolutionary War, the United States had forced the four Iroquois tribes allied with the British to cede their lands and migrate to Canada. By specific treaties, the US set aside small reservations in New York for their own allies, the
Onondaga and Seneca. In the 1840s, long after the war, the
Ogden Land Company, a
real estate venture, laid claim to the Seneca
Tonawanda Reservation on the basis of a fraudulent treaty. The Seneca sued and had representatives at the state capital pressing their case when Morgan was there. The delegation, led by Jimmy Johnson, its chief officer (and son of chief
Red Jacket), were essentially former officers of what was left of the Iroquois Confederacy. Johnson's 16-year-old grandson
Ha-sa-ne-an-da (
Ely Parker) accompanied them as their interpreter, as he had attended a
mission school and was bilingual. By chance Morgan and the young Parker encountered each other in an Albany book store. Soon intrigued by Morgan's talk of the New Confederacy, Parker invited the older man to interview Johnson and meet the delegation. Morgan took pages of organizational notes, which he used to remodel the New Confederacy. Beyond such details of scholarship, Morgan and the Seneca men formed deep attachments of friendship. 's staff.
Ely Parker sits on the left.
The Ogden Land Company affair Meanwhile, the organization had had activist goals from the beginning. In his initial New Gordius address Morgan had said: ... when the last tribe shall slumber in the grass, it is to be feared that the stain of blood will be found on the escutcheon of the American republic. This nation must shield their declining day ... In 1838 the
Ogden Land Company began a campaign to defraud the remaining Iroquois in New York of their lands. By Iroquois law, only a unanimous vote of all the chiefs sitting in council could effect binding decisions relating to the tribe. The OLC set about to purchase the votes of as many chiefs as it could, plying some with alcohol. The chiefs in many cases complied, believing any resolutions to sell the land would be defeated in council. Obtaining a majority vote for sale at one council called for the purpose, the OLC took their treaty to the Congress of the United States, which knew nothing of Iroquois law. President
Martin Van Buren advised Congress that the treaty was fraudulent but on June 11, 1838, Congress adopted it as a resolution. After being compensated for their land by $1.67 per acre (Morgan said it was worth $16 per acre), the Seneca were to be evicted forthwith. The great majority of the tribe were against the sale of the land. When they discovered they had been defrauded, they were galvanized to action. The New Confederacy stepped into the case on the side of the Seneca, conducting a major publicity campaign. They held mass meetings, circulated a general petition, and spoke to congressmen in Washington. The US
Indian agent and ethnologist
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and other influential men became honorary members. In 1846 a general convention of the population of
Genesee County, New York, sent Morgan to Congress with a counter-offer. The Seneca were allowed to buy back some land at $20 per acre, at which time the Tonawanda Reservation was created. The previous treaty was thrown out. Returning home, Morgan was adopted into the Hawk Clan, Seneca Tribe, as the son of Jimmy Johnson on October 31, 1847, in part to honor his work with the Seneca on the reservation issues. They named him
Tayadaowuhkuh, meaning "bridging the gap" (between the
Iroquois and the European Americans). After Morgan was admitted to the tribe, he lost interest in the New Confederacy. The group retained its secrecy and initiation requirements, but they were being hotly disputed. When internal dissent began to impede the group's efficacy in 1847, Morgan stopped attending. For practical purposes it ceased to exist, but Morgan and Parker continued with a series of "Iroquois Letters" to the
American Whig Review, edited by George Colton. The Seneca case dragged on. Finally in 1857 the
Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that only the federal government could evict the Seneca from their land. As it declined to do that, the case was over.
Marriage and family In 1851 Morgan summarized his investigation of Iroquois customs in his first book of note,
League of the Iroquois, one of the founding works of ethnology. In it he compares systems of
kinship. In that year also he married his
cross-cousin, Mary Elizabeth Steele, his companion and partner for the rest of his life. She had intended to become a
Presbyterian missionary. On their wedding day he presented to her an ornate copy of his new book. It was dedicated to his collaborator,
Ely Parker. In 1853 Mary's father died, leaving her a large inheritance. The Morgans bought a
brownstone in a wealthy suburb of Rochester. In that year they had a son, Lemuel, who "turned out to be mentally handicapped". Morgan's rising fame had brought him public attention, and Lemuel's condition (on no specific evidence) was universally attributed to the
first-cousin marriage. The Morgans had to endure perpetual criticism, which they accepted as true, Lewis going so far as to take a stand against cousin marriage in his book
Ancient Society. The Morgan marriage nevertheless remained a close and affectionate one. In 1856, Mary Elisabeth was born and in 1860 Helen King. Morgan and his wife were active in the
First Presbyterian Church of Rochester, although it was mainly of interest to Mary. Lewis refused to make "the public profession of Christ that was necessary for full membership". but Morgan and other leading men of Rochester decided to found a university, the
University of Rochester. It did not support the matriculation of women. The group resolved to found a college for women, the
Barleywood Female University, which was advertised but apparently never started. In the same year of its foundation, 1852, the donor of the land on which it was to be located gave it to the University of Rochester instead. Morgan was gravely disappointed. He believed that equality of the sexes is a mark of advanced civilization. For the present, he lacked the wealth and connections to prevent the collapse of Barleywood. Later he would serve as a founding trustee of the board of
Wells College in Aurora. In addition, he and Mary would leave their estate to the University of Rochester for the foundation of a women's college.
Success at last In 1855 Morgan and other Rochester businessmen invested in the expanding metals industry of the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After a brief sojourn on the 5-man board of the
Iron Mountain Railroad, Morgan joined them in creating the
Bay de Noquet and Marquette Railroad Company, connecting the entire Upper Peninsula by a single, ore-bearing line. In 1861 in the middle of his field work, Morgan was elected as Member of the New York State Assembly on the Republican ticket. The Morgans traditionally had belonged to the
Whigs, which dissolved in 1856; most Whigs joined the
Republicans, created in 1854. Morgan did not run with any agenda except his own as it pertained to the Iroquois. He was seeking appointment by the President of the United States as Commissioner of the new
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Morgan anticipated that
William H. Seward would be elected president, and outlined to him plans to employ the natives in the manufacture and sale of Indian goods.
Field anthropologist After attending the 1856 meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Morgan decided on an ethnology study to compare kinship systems. He conducted a field research program funded by himself and the
Smithsonian Institution, 1859–1862. He made four expeditions, two to the Plains tribes of
Kansas and
Nebraska, and two more up the
Missouri River past
Yellowstone. This was before the development of any inland transportation system. Passengers on
riverboats could shoot
Bison and other game for food along the upper Missouri River. He collected data on 51 kinship systems. Tribes included the
Winnebago,
Crow,
Yankton,
Kaw,
Blackfeet,
Omaha and others. At the height of Morgan's anthropological field work, death struck his family. In May and June, 1862, their two daughters, ages 6 and 2, died as a result of
scarlet fever while Morgan was traveling in the West. In
Sioux City, Iowa, Morgan received the news from his wife. He wrote in his journal: Two of three of my children are taken. Our family is destroyed. The intelligence has simply petrified me. I have not shed a tear. It is too profound for tears. Thus ends my last expedition. I go home to my stricken and mourning wife, a miserable and destroyed man.
The Civil War Morgan was anti-slavery but opposed abolitionism on the grounds that slavery was protected by law. Before the war he assented to the possible division of the nation on the grounds of "irreconcilable differences", that is, slavery, between regions. Morgan began to change his mind when some of his friends who had gone out to watch the
First Battle of Bull Run were captured and imprisoned by the
Confederates for the duration. By the end of the war, he was insisting along with most others that
Jefferson Davis be hanged as a traitor. In 1866 he formed the Rochester Committee for the Relief of Southern Starvation. Morgan did participate indirectly in the war through his company. Recovering from the deaths of his daughters and having resolved to end the expeditions that had taken him away from home, he gave his life totally over to business. In 1863 he and Samuel Ely formed a partnership creating the Morgan Iron Company in northern Michigan. The war had created such a high demand for metals that within the first year of business, the company paid off its founding debt and offered 100% dividends on its stock. The demand went on until 1868, enabling the company to construct a blast furnace. Morgan became independently wealthy and could retire from the practice of law.
The Erie Railroad affair Morgan took up
trout fishing during his Michigan period. He fished in the wilds of Michigan during the summers, sometimes with
Ojibwe guides. During this recreational activity, he became interested in
beavers, which had greatly modified the lowlands. After several summers of tracking and observing beavers in the field, in 1868 he published a work describing in detail the biology and habits of this animal, which shaped the environment through its construction of dams. Morgan was elected a member of the
American Antiquarian Society in 1865. From 1868 to 1869, Morgan served in the state government again as a senator, but still sought appointment as head of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was ridiculed by the
Union Advertiser as being a "hobby candidate". As member of the Standing Committee on Railroads, Morgan became embroiled in a major issue of the day and one closer to his interests:
monopoly. The
New York Central Railroad, under
Cornelius Vanderbilt, had attempted a hostile takeover of the
Erie Railroad under
Jay Gould by buying up its stock. The two railroads competed for the Rochester market.
Daniel Drew, Erie's treasurer, defended successfully by creating new stock, which he had his friends sold short, dropping the value of the stock. Vanderbilt dumped the stock, barely covering the losses. Ordinarily such stock manipulations were illegal. The Railroad Act of 1850, however, allowed railroads to borrow money in exchange for bonds convertible to stocks. Given essentially free stocks, friends of the Erie Railroad grew rich; that is, Drew had found a way to transfer Vanderbilt's wealth to his own friends. Vanderbilt just escaped ruin. He immediately appealed to the state government. For one year, 1870–71, the three Morgans went on a grand tour of Europe. During his European travels, Morgan met
Charles Darwin and the great British
anthropologists of the age, including
Sir John Lubbock. He continued with his independent scholarship, never becoming affiliated with any university, although he associated with university presidents and the leading ethnologists looked up to him as a founder of the field. He was an intellectual mentor to those who followed, including
John Wesley Powell, who became head of the
Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 at the
Smithsonian Institution. Morgan was consulted by the highest levels of government on appointments and other ethnological matters. In 1878 he conducted one final field trip, leading a small party in search of native ruins in the
American Southwest. They were the first to describe the so-called
Aztec ruins (actually built by the
Ancestral Puebloans) on the
Animas River but missed discovering
Mesa Verde.
Death and legacy In 1879 Morgan completed two construction projects. One was his library, an addition to the house he had purchased with Mary many years before and where he died in December 1881. He combined the opening of the library with a celebration of the 25th anniversary of The club. It included a dinner for 40 persons, who were by that time the leading lights of Rochester. The library acquired some fame as a local monument. Pictures were taken and published. The Club only met there one other time, however, at Morgan's funeral in 1881. The second building project was a mausoleum for his daughters in
Mount Hope Cemetery. It became the resting place of the entire remainder of the family, starting with Lewis. The Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture was established as a distinguished lecture held annually by the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Rochester. Begun in 1963, the lectures honor the career and seminal research of American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan. Many of the lectures have been published, including the inaugural one by South African anthropologist
Meyer Fortes. The distinguished lecturers have been among the top names in anthropology, ranging from Meyer Fortes and Victor Turner to Emily Martin, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Paul Farmer. Recent Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures have been delivered by anthropologists
Deborah A. Thomas,
Sarah Lamb,
Gabriella Coleman,
Laurence Ralph,
Janet Carsten,
J. Lorand Matory, and
Veena Das, among others. ==Thought==