living at their widowed father's with his three young sisters; and Robert was on another family holding at the main Elizabethtowne settlement. Besides his brother and others in the community, Peter's "well beloved friends," as he called them, were Joseph Marsh and Samuel Oliver, both nearby neighbors of Rawack Neck.

In May of 1702, at the age of some seventy years, he passed to the Great Beyond. His last resting place is unknown. A hundred and fifty years later in Medfield, Massachusetts, his name was inscribed on a Memorial, as one of a related group of "Seven Puritans Who Emigrated from England to America". And among his close friends and neighbors, (whose simple faith he himself may have embraced) were "those people called Quakers".

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Chapter III. TWO JOSEPHS AND THEIR BRETHERN

"A handsome house to lodge a friend,

a river at my garden's end."

Swift

"The Great Charter of England, alias Magna Carta, is the only rule, privilege, and joint safety of every free-born Englishman"--* wrote the Freeholders of New Jersey about the time that Joseph Morse, I, the third generation in America, was ushered into this primitive American world. A son of Peter and Mary, he was born on his father's plantation at "Rawack Neck" about the year 1677. He was named for an uncle, whose death occurred prior to his namesake's birth -- a name which was to be a common one in the family hereafter. The eldest of his brothers and sisters, -- all of whom were to miss a great deal of the education which their parents and grandparents had enjoyed -- he led them all in learning the ways of the woods and the water courses. To Joseph I, who could sail his father's skiff before he could read, it was but natural that the sea sent out to him a strong appeal, and this was the decade of unusual activity along the coast and rivers of North America. There is no doubt but that the sea had a strong fascination for the young adventuresome sons of early America. Perhaps indeed it was the dangers that accompanied this career that made it so attractive, for in those days pirate ships lurked outside many colonial ports. It was the time of Captain Kidd, the former respectable naval commander, turned pirate, whose activities touched in no small way the seaport of New York as well as the borders of New Jersey. Some of these vessels which flew the "blood red flag" carried as many as twenty guns and crews of over 100 men. But not withstanding this, there was much legitimate colonial shipping along the coast and Joseph I, as a mariner before he was twenty, sailed as far north as Newfoundland, and as far south as the West Indies. Sometimes these mariners engaged in whaling for a voyage or two, for at this time it was a flourishing industry, particularly at Elizabethtowne, and young hands were needed to man the several vessels which followed this trade. Whales were extremely plentiful on Long Island Sound, and despite the possibilities of pirate attacks coastwise whaling at that time on the Atlantic seaboard was a popular and remunerative industry. It is said that the father of George Washington, in his youth, had followed the sea; and that his distinguished son, some years later, was only prevented from following this career by the letter from his uncle in London: "...... a common sailor before the mast has by no means the common liberty of

*

*

See Appendix 30

See Appendix 31

See Appendix 32