BATH, Maine — Letters, photographs and other papers from Charles W. Morse, a Bath native, financier and shipping magnate for whom the city’s high school is named, have been listed for sale by a rare books dealer in New Jersey — for $30,000.
Morse, who died in 1933, became a prominent ice dealer in New York City. He gained acclaim as “the Ice King,” before buying several shipping companies and working in finance. At one point Morse controlled more than 10 banks “and had established a virtual monopoly of East Coast shipping from Bangor to Galveston,” according to Ken Giese of Between the Covers Rare Books in Gloucester City, New Jersey.
Morse donated to Bath the funds to build the original Morse High School. That building subsequently burned in the early 20th century and was rebuilt, with the new structure continuing to bear his name.
He was widely regarded as one of Bath’s most influential people during the latter stages of the 19th century, but he ran afoul of the law on occasion during his colorful life.
Morse was indicted in 1907 for attempting to manipulate the price of copper shares and served two years in prison before he was pardoned by President William Howard Taft. Before he was indicted again in 1920 for profiteering and fraud, Morse oversaw the operation of the largest river steamers in the world, Giese wrote in the listing for the collection.
The collection includes hundreds of letters, photographs and other papers that belonged to Morse and his sister, Jennie Rodbird Morse. The items date largely from the 1880s to the 1920s. Among them are an 1877 travel diary kept by Morse, scrapbooks assembled by Morse’s mother of shipping and shipbuilding in and around Bath, pocket diaries kept by his sister, an 1863 quit-claim deed signed by Bath native and science fiction writer Edward P. Mitchell and letters from T.J. Southard, the Richmond-based shipbuilder.
Giese declined to identify the current owner of the collection, but said Between the Covers acquired it on consignment from another rare book dealer, who bought it from another dealer, “who bought it locally, most likely at an estate sale, from a Morse descendant at or near Noank,” Giese wrote in an email to the Bangor Daily News.
He said the collection was likely assembled and retained by Morse’s son, Harry F. Morse, who assumed his father’s shipbuilding operations in Connecticut, Groton Iron Works and the Noank Shipyard, in the late 1920s.
Tom Congalton, owner of Between the Covers, said Thursday that potential buyers for the Morse collection could be special collections departments of a research library or historical society, and that most archives are sold for their research value to researchers, authors and historians.
Congalton said Between the Covers has sold archives for prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to, in a few cases, millions of dollars.
Between the Covers is also selling a separate album of Morse’s portrait photographs of the 1877 Bowdoin College senior class, with which Morse graduated. The album includes 61 photos of historic graduates, including Joshua Chamberlain, a Civil War general and the 32nd governor of Maine, and explorer Robert Edwin Peary.