Richard Cary Morse was born on September 19, 1841, in Hudson, Columbia County, New York.

He was an editor, author, and YMCA secretary. He graduated from Andover Theological Academy in 1858 and from Yale College in 1862. He then spent two years in Auburn, New York as a private tutor, followed by two years of study at the Princeton and Union Theological Seminaries, receiving degrees from both institutions in 1867. After the ownership of the New York Observer had passed from the elder Morse brothers to Richard Cary Morse's son, Sidney Edwards Morse, Richard was offered an assistant editorship. He decided that religious journalism would serve as a fit beginning his ministerial career. In 1869, he was asked to take a new position as YMCA secretary and editor, taking charge of a quarterly magazine. This began a 47-year career which culminated in the position of the General Secretary of the International Committee of YMCA. In this capacity, Morse traveled the world to help extend YMCA influence and prepared works on the organization's history. Though ordained in 1869, Richard Morse never served as a minister. The YMCA became his calling and the central activity of his life. He published "History of the North American Young Men's Christian Associations" (1913) and his autobiography "My Life with Young Men, Fifty Years in the Young Men's Christian Association" (1918).

In 1883, he married Jane “Jennie” Elizabeth Van Cott (1851–1917). He died on December 25, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York.

Edward Sylvester Morse was born on June 18, 1838, in Portland, Maine.

He was an American zoologist, archeologist, orientalist, and author. He attended Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, where he discovered a minute land snail. This discovery would launch his career as a natural scientist when the Boston Society of Natural History proclaimed it a new species in 1859 and named it in his honour Tympanis morsei. As a gifted draughtsman, he prepared wood engravings for natural history publications. He completed his education at Harvard and served as Louis Agassiz's assistant in charge of conservation, documentation, and drawing collections of mollusks and brachiopods until 1862. In 1864, he published his first work devoted to mollusks, "Observations on the Terrestrial Pulmonifera of Maine". He co-founded The American Naturalist and became one of its editors. In 1868, he was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1874, he was made a lecturer at Harvard University. In 1876, he became a Fellow of the National Academy of Science and in 1885, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 1871 to 1874, Morse held the chair of comparative anatomy and zoology at Bowdoin College. In 1877, he visited Japan in search of new specimens for his studies. He was offered a position as a professor at Tokyo Imperial University and stayed until 1879. While in Japan, he began his collection of Japanese pottery, considered the finest of that era in the U.S. Much of his collection was purchased in 1890 by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The remainder is now called The Morse Collection at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. He often travelled to the Far East that inspired several books, with his illustrations, e.g., “Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings” (1885), “Latrines of the East” (1893), and “Japan Day by Day” (1917). In 1898, as the first American, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (3rd class) by the Japanese government. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1898. He became chairman of the Boston Museum in 1914 and chairman of the Peabody Museum in 1915. He was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasures (2nd class) by the Japanese government in 1922.

In 1863, he married Ellen "Nellie" Elizabeth Owen (1837–1911). He died on December 20, 1925, in Salem, Massachusetts.

Charles James Morse was born on July 7, 1852, in Poland, Mahoning County, Ohio.

He was an engineer and collector of Chinese and Japanese art. He studied civil engineering at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College (1871-1877). From 1876 to 1877, he was an engineer for the Massillon Bridge Co., and in 1878, together with his brother Henry G. Morse (1850-1903), he founded Morse Bridge Co. of Youngstown, Ohio. After the company was destroyed by fire in 1888, he visited Europe with members of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 1890-1891, he was manager of the Association of Bridge Builders, with an office in Chicago, and became the consulting engineer and western representative of the Edgemoor Bridge Works of Wilmington, Delaware. He later moved to Evanston, Illinois, where was in charge of the construction and replacement of several important bridges. In 1897, he retired in order to pursue his interest in oriental art. He spent a year in Japan, visiting the great temples, museums, and private collections there. During his years of study, he collected paintings, prints, pottery, and other objects of Chinese and Japanese art, and a library of eight thousand volumes relating to art and art history, for which he built a fireproof library and vault adjoining his home. He was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Asiatic Society of Japan.

In 1884, he married Anne Perkins Woodbridge (1861–1962). He died on December 6, 1911, in Evanston, Cook County, Illinois, and is buried in Poland, Ohio.

Stephen Morrissey is a Montreal-born poet. Morrissey earned his B.A., Honours English with Distinction, at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1973. He studied with poet Louis Dudek at McGill University (M.A., English, 1976). In the 1970s, Morrissey was a member of the Vehicule Poets, a group of poets associated with Vehicule Art Gallery. Morrissey published his first poetry book, The Trees of Unknowing, in 1978 (Montreal, Vehicule Press). Other books by Morrissey include Divisions (Toronto, Coach House Press, 1983); Family Album (Vancouver, Caitlin Press, 1989); Morrissey’s “The Shadow Trilogy” consists of The Compass (Montreal, Empyreal Press, 1993), The Yoni Rocks (Montreal, Empyreal Press, 1995), and The Mystic Beast (Montreal, Empyreal Press, 1997); and Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems 1978-1998 (Winnipeg, The Muse’s Company, 1998). In addition, Stephen Morrissey’s work has been published in chapbooks, periodicals, newspapers, and anthologies. Morrissey edited and published two experimental literary magazines, what is and The Montreal Journal of Poetics. In 2000, Stephen Morrissey and Carolyn Zonailo co-founded Coracle Press, www.coraclepress.com, which publishes online chapbooks but has also published several print versions of books. Morrissey has also written many reviews of poetry books and books on Jungian psychology. He has published online a comprehensive history of his family, www.morrisseyfamilyhistory.com, beginning in 1837 when the family moved to Canada from Ireland, to the present day. He has read his work at universities and other venues across Canada and in the United States. Stephen Morrissey is married to Vancouver-born poet Carolyn Zonailo. He has one son, Jake Morrissey, by a previous marriage. Stephen Morrissey teaches literature at Champlain College, Montreal.