BANGOR and HANCOCK POINT – Jane (Crowell) Morse, wife of poet Samuel French Morse, died peacefully Dec. 6, 2011. She was born Dec. 11, 1922, in Bangor, daughter of F. Donald Crowell and Frances (Atwood) Crowell.
After her graduation from Mount Holyoke College in 1945 and the University of Maine in 1947, Mrs. Morse enjoyed a career of teaching composition and literature at Boston University and the University of Maine, from which she retired in 2009. Lecturing and reviewing children’s books were special avocations. She edited “Beatrix Potter’s Americans: Selected Letters,” and was the American liaison officer for the Beatrix Potter Society. The natural world was always of great interest to Mrs. Morse, and after she returned to Maine to live permanently in 1985 she was active in the Eastern Maine Chapter of Maine Audubon Society and spent numerous hours at Fields Pond Audubon Center with her close friend, Judy Markowsky.
She is survived by her son, Samuel Crowell Morse and his wife, Anne, and two granddaughters, Catherine and Eleanor, of Amherst, Mass.; and her brother, Lewis Crowell of Bangor.
Committal services will be held in the spring at Oak Hill Cemetery, Winterport. Friends who wish may contribute in her memory to Fields Pond Audubon Center, 216 Fields Pond Road, Holden, ME 04429; or Hancock Point Library, care of Barbara Welch, treasurer, 661 East Side Road, Hancock, ME 04640. A service of Brookings-Smith, Bangor.