MORSE, LEOPOLD:

By: Cyrus Adler

American congressman; merchant; born at Wachenheim, Rhenish Bavaria, Aug. 15, 1831; died in Boston, Mass., Dec. 15, 1892. He attended the school of his native town until he was thirteen years old. Five years later he emigrated to the United States (1849) and took up his residence at Tamworth, N. H., where he went to school for a short time. Soon afterward he removed to New Bedford, Mass., where he started in the retail clothing business in a store on Water street. In 1851 he moved to Boston and resided there until his death. In that city he laid the foundation of a very large and successful business.

Morse was five times elected to the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, winning his election each time as a Democrat in a district having a supposedly Republican majority. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions held in 1872 and 1876.

Morse founded the Boston Home for Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage, situated in Mattapan, a suburb of Boston (the first Jewish institution of the kind in New England), the name of which was changed after his death, by an act of the legislature of Massachusetts, to the "Leopold Morse Home for Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage."

A.