Samuel George Morton Papers, American Philosophical Society

Through his craniometic studies of human races, the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) exerted a profound influence on the development of physical anthropology in antebellum America, and made substantial contributions to mineralogy, paleontology, and natural history. Relating primarily to Morton's scientific interests, the Morton Papers include insights into Morton's perspectives on education, medical practice, geology and mineralogy, craniology, paleontology, the Wilkes Exploring Expedition (also known as the United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842), and his two major monographs, the Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca. Several of the letters were written by Morton in his capacity as corresponding secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

Also included in this collection are Morton's "Some Remarks on the Infrequency of Mixed Offspring Between the European and Australian Races" (1850), Joseph Barclay Pentland's notes on the aborigines of Peru (ca. 1840?), and newspaper clippings on Morton's death; a diary of Morton's trip to the West Indies, 1834, a set of craniological sketches for use in Crania Americana, and a microfilm of letters in private hands, written to Morton, 1838-1844

Background note

F. Davis sketch of skull from a mound,
Cincinnati, Ohio

Antebellum America's foremost craniologist, Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) cast a long shadow over the history of physical anthropology and "race science." The son of Jane Cummings and the Philadelphia merchant, George Morton, Samuel was left fatherless at an early age, and was taken to Westchester County, N.Y., to be raised. Attending Quaker schools, he was fed a steady diet of natural history and empirical science, and after his return to Philadelphia in 1812 with his mother's remarriage to an amateur mineralogist, Thomas Rogers, his scientific grounding continued.

In 1815, however, Morton's education was interrupted when he was apprenticed to a merchant in the city, although his step-father and a family acquaintance, John Gummere, encouraged him to continue his studies on his own. With his mother's death in 1817, Morton broke away from commerce and began to study medicine with the prominent physician Joseph Parrish, and by attending lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, was awarded an MD in 1820. Support from a wealthy uncle in Ireland allowed Morton to further his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, which granted him a second MD in 1823.

Morton thus returned to Philadelphia with sterling credentials as a physician, however for several years, he struggled to establish himself in the city's tightly-knit medical community. As physician to the Philadelphia Almshouse and later as Professor of Anatomy at Pennsylvania College (1839-1843), he slowly established a viable practice, at the same time inculcating himself into several of the local scientific and medical institutions. Morton was an important member of the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and the American Philosophical Society, to which he was elected in 1828. Outside medicine, he built a substantial reputation as an adept natural historian. His earliest research projects in the late 1820s and 1830s, epitomized by his well-regarded study of the fossils collected by Lewis and Clark, Synopsis of the Organic Remains of the Cretaceous Group of the United States (Philadelphia: Key & Biddle, 1834), were centered in the then-chic fields of geology and paleontology, but his interests quickly shifted into anthropology.

Beginning prior to 1834, Morton began to take a deep interest in the quintessentially American enterprise of racial science, and his groundbreaking work in craniology and craniometry proved to be the most enduring of his scientific contributions. The prominence of phrenology in Philadelphia scientific circles, reflected in the work of Charles Caldwell and others, quickened Morton's interests in the measurement of skulls as a means of identifying and comparing the intellectual capacities and "character" of the races. Through scientific colleagues such as Marmaduke Burrough and Ephraim George Squier, but also through merchants, missionaries, and members of the military, Morton assembled the largest collection of skulls in North America, which became the basis of his painstaking, statistical comparisons of human populations. His skull collection was eventually donated to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and is documented in the exhaustive Catalogue of Skulls of Man, and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton (Philadelphia: Turner & Fisher, 1840).

F. Davis sketch of skull from a mound (lateral),
Cincinnati, Ohio

The first fruits of Morton's research was published as Crania Americana, or, a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839), a work which sought to corroborate the five-fold racial division of Blumenbach. Based upon his estimates of cranial volume, Morton concluded that the American Indians from Canada to Patagonia were descended from a common stock (i.e., were monophyletic) that was clearly distinct from the races of the Old World, and he argued forcefully against the theory that environment contributed to race formation. More importantly for the subsequent history of racial science, Morton argued that he had demonstrated the presence of significant differences in cranial capacity -- and therefore intelligence -- among the races, with "Mongolians" and Caucasians heading the list, and "Americans" and "Ethiopians" bringing up the rear.

In his second major work, Crania Aegyptiaca, or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History, and the Monuments (Philadelphia: J. Pennington, 1844), Morton took his reasoning further. Comparing skulls obtained by George R. Gliddon from archaeological sites in Egypt, then the oldest available, he deduced that racial distinctions were as prominent 6,000 years ago as they were in 1840. The elite of Ancient Egypt, he argued, were Caucasians, and while "Negroes" were abundant, "their social position, in ancient times," he insisted, "was the same as it is now; that of servants or slaves." In essence, Morton argued for the polygenic origins of humanity and the inexpungibility of racial distinctions.

Morton's work met with a receptive audience in much of the United States. Its massive empirical base was praised by the scientific elite, and his theories on human relations were endorsed avidly by pro-slavery advocates. His most zealous supporters were Gliddon and the Alabama physician, Josiah Nott, who developed his own, highly elaborated polygenic theory as an apologetic for slavery. However, support for Morton's conclusions did not align easily with such sentiments. The apparent conflict of Morton's work with the theory of unitary origins presented in Genesis proved unpalatable to many religiously-inclined scientists, including those who defended slavery on other grounds. Prominent among his detractors was the South Carolinian, John Bachman, a Lutheran minister and natural historian, who was no opponent of slavery. Bachman argued that the interfertility of Africans and Caucasians proved the Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race (Charleston, S.C.: C. Canning, 1850), to quote the title of his book, to which Morton responded by beginning an investigation into hybridity among species of animals.

Morton's work on hybridity, however, never appeared. An attack of pleurisy in 1848 left him greatly weakened and three years later, he succumbed. Morton's marriage to Rebecca Grellet Pearsall in 1827 resulted in eight children, all of whom survived him.

Scope and content

The papers of Samuel George Morton offer important insight into the development of the "American School" of physical anthropology during the infancy of the science, and insight into the conduct of natural history during its heyday in the 1830s. Consisting of 1.5 linear feet of incoming correspondence from many of the major scientists of the period, over two thirds of the collection dates from the 1830s, when Morton was beginning his craniological investigations in earnest, and was in full stride with his work in mineralogy and paleontology.

Morton's omnivorous interests in natural historical and medical subjects emerges through his correspondence, although because the collection is comprised almost exclusively of in-coming letters, Morton's perspective generally must be inferred from the responses of his correspondents. His abundant correspondence with the phrenologist George Combe and with George Gliddon, Marmaduke Burrough, Gerard Troost, and James Cowles Prichard, provides particularly useful information about the development of Morton's skull collection and the evolution of his thoughts on craniometry during the late 1830s and early 1840s. A manuscript written late in life, "Some remarks on the infrequency of mixed offspring between the European and Australian races" (1850) bears the stamp of a response to John Bachman's critique of Morton's polygenism, and can be seen as a bellwether for his never-published work, the Elements of Ethnology.

More typical of the collection, however, are the numerous letters on other natural historical subjects, ranging from botany and ornithology to geology. Morton's work in mineralogy and paleontology, in particular, is an important subject of his correspondence with Parker Cleaveland, Edward Hitchcock, William Maclure, Benjamin Silliman, Gideon Mantell, and William Cooper.


Series I	Correspondence, 1819-1850	1.5 linear feet
Series II	Diary, 1833-ca.1837	1 vol. (25p.)
Series III	Craniological sketches, ca.1838	11 items
Series IV	Microfilm, 1838-1844	1 reel

Administrative information

Restrictions

Permission to quote from materials in Series IV (Microfilm) must be obtained in advance from the owners of the original items.

Provenance

Gift of Arthur V. Morton and Mrs. John Story Jenks, 1943. Series IV was filmed in 1980 from originals owned by Dr. Charles H. Montgomery (as of 2002).

Preferred citation

Cite as: Samuel George Morton Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Alternate formats

Series II has been microfilmed (film 1374).

Additional information

Separated material

Materials separated from the main body of the collection, with call numbers and location information as appropriate.

Related material

The Library Company of Philadelphia owns the other major collection of Morton Papers, focussing generally on the later period in Morton's career and more intensively on Morton's craniology. The collection is served through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Sixteen letters of Morton's with Victor and John James Audubon, 1836-1840, are located in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

Morton appears as a correspondent in numerous other collections at the APS, including the Letters of Scientists Collection and the papers of William Maclure, John Edward Gray, John Fries Frazer, and William Parker Foulke.

References

All of Morton's major published works are available at the APS, including:

Morton, Samuel George, Crania Aegyptiaca; or, Observations of Egyptian Ethnography Derived From Anatomy, History, and the Monuments (Philadelphia: J. Pennington, 1844). Call no.: 573.7 M84

Morton, Samuel George, Crania Americana: or, Comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North & South America (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1839). Call no.: 573.7 M84c