Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826), clergyman and geographer, was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale College (later Yale University) in 1783. Having held his first pastoral appointment in 1785 in nearby Norwich, he returned to Yale as a tutor, 1786–87. Morse thereafter served as minister of a Congregational church in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1789–1819. An ardent Federalist, advocate of orthodox Calvinist views, and opponent of Unitarianism, in 1805 he established and edited the Panoplist, a religious journal. Morse was also a founder of Andover Theological Seminary in 1808, the New England Tract Society in 1814, and the American Bible Society in 1816. After leaving the pulpit he composed a study of the Indians living in western New York and the Great Lakes region for the federal government. Morse is perhaps best known as the “Father of American Geography.” Although essentially a compiler of the work of others, his writings in the field were both influential and popular. Geography Made Easy (New Haven, [1784]), The American Geography (Elizabethtown, N.J., 1789; revised as The American Universal Geography, Boston, 1793, Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 3963), and The American Gazetteer (Boston, 1797; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 3964) all went through many editions. Morse died in New Haven (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 41 vols. description ends , 26:369; Richard J. Moss, The Life of Jedidiah Morse: A Station of Peculiar Exposure [1995]; Yale Catalogue description begins Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, 1701–1910, 1910 description ends , 22, 74; Dexter, Yale Biographies description begins Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, 1885–1912, 6 vols. description ends , 4:295–304; Sprague, American Pulpit description begins William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 1857–69, 9 vols. description ends , 2:247–56; Hartford Connecticut Courant, 12 June 1826).

TJ’s letter of the 14th ult. was addressed to Joseph C. Cabell.