Emily Malbone Morgan (December 10, 1862 – February 27, 1937) was a prominent social and religious leader in the
Episcopal Church in the United States who helped found the
Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross as well as the Colonel Daniel Putnam Association.
Early life
Emily Malbone Morgan, born in
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
, was the youngest child and only daughter born to merchant Henry Kirke Morgan (1819-1911) and his devout wife, the former Emily Malbone Brinley (1824-1907). Emily Morgan never married and ultimately survived all her brothers: Edward (1857-1874), Henry (1854-1931), William (1850-1936), and George (1848-1908).
Her parents could trace their ancestry to colonial times, and her brother George became a prominent Episcopal priest and Rector of
Christ Church in
New Haven, Connecticut in 1887 (a position he held until his death in an automobile accident two decades later). The house in which she was born and raised had previously belonged to the parents of
J. Pierpont Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...
Emily was mostly home schooled by her mother (including via travel to Europe), and throughout her life had many operations for thyroid and other conditions, but became known for her good humor and management gifts. The family belonged to Trinity Church in Hartford, and her mother corresponded with some in the
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of O ...
. Emily briefly attended Miss Haines's school in Hartford. As a teenager, Emily became interested in writing, as well as involved in girls' clubs and an organization called the United Workers.
Career
In 1883, Morgan's childhood friend, Adelyn Howard, fell ill with a hip disease, which made her a lonely invalid in a town in which she had no friends or family. The following year, Morgan, with Howard and Harriet Hastings of
Wellesley, Massachusetts founded the
Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, to allow the shut-in Adelyn—and other religious women who valued thanksgiving, intercessory prayer, and simplicity of life—to pray and work for social justice. Morgan had a talent for providing hospitality, and considered her "greatest desire...has always been to make tired people rested and happy."
The group ministered to women working in the nearby textile mills, in part by establishing houses throughout the northeastern United States where such working-class women and their children could vacation.
In 1889, two years after moving to New Haven, Morgan began her writing career, publishing ''A Little White Shadow,'' the proceeds of which she used to fund vacation homes. That same year she established the first of many, ''Heartsease'' in
Saybrook, Connecticut for "tired women, girls and children." As such, Morgan can be considered part of the
Deaconess movement in which over 5000 Protestant women participated circa 1890. In 1901, Morgan purchased what became their headquarters and retreat center, in
Byfield, Massachusetts
Byfield is a village (also referred to as a "parish") in the town of Newbury, in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It borders West Newbury, Georgetown, and Rowley. It is located about 30 miles north-northeast of Boston, along Int ...
, which was named ''Adelynrood'' upon its renovation in 1915 (remembering both Howard, who had died in 1898, and an old word for "cross"). Another home with daily religious services attended by Protestants, Jews and Catholics, was called ''Beulahland''.
In 1906, Morgan bought the Putnam Elms, the
Windham County, Connecticut home of Morgan's maternal great grandfather Colonel Daniel Putnam from 1791 until his death in 1831. She also helped found the
Colonel Daniel Putnam Association in 1910. In her later years, Morgan led a Sunday School class at
Trinity Church, Boston.
Legacy
Emily Malbone Morgan was buried in Hartford's Spring Grove Cemetery.
The Episcopal Church (USA) remembers her
liturgically on
February 25
Events Pre-1600
* 138 – Roman emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius as his son, effectively making him his successor.
* 628 – Khosrow II, the last great Shah of the Sasanian Empire (Iran), is overthrown by his son Kavadh II.
...
.
Her cousin,
Daniel Putnam Brinley (1879-1963), became a well-known muralist, as well as a leading Episcopalian, and her biographer
Vida Dutton Scudder is also honored on the Episcopal liturgical calendar (on October 10). The Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross currently has approximately eight hundred members and continues to operate retreat centers.
Bibliography
*A Little White Shadow (1889)
Prior Rahere's Rose(1893)
*Poppy Garden (1894)
A Lady of Olden Time(1896)
*Flight of the Swallow (1902)
edited by
Vida Dutton Scudder (1944)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morgan, Emily Malbone
1862 births
1937 deaths
American fiction writers
Anglican saints