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Alden Reed of Worcester stands at the front of the former Morse Mansion on Church Street in Putnam. He is the great-great grandson of mill owner George Milton Morse. The Daughters of the Holy Spirit, who own the home now, gave Reed a tour of the homestead last week. Linda Lemmon photo.
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Family Home
Alden Reed stands in the former Morse Mansion front parlor next to a painting of the Morse Mansion believed to have been with the house from the beginning. In the left foreground in the painting, a man is working the controls on the Cargill Falls dam. Linda Lemmon photo.
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM --- The impetus to find out more about his family may have started with the trips to Putnam in the 1970s and 1980s. Or maybe the family story or two passed down for generations tweaked his interest. Or perhaps the real sense of urgency to find out more about his roots came from a fire at his brother's home.
Alden Reed of Worcester stepped into the elegant halls of his great-great-grandfather George Morse's stately home on Church Street and surrounded himself with his family's history. The mansion's current owners, the Daughters of the Holy Spirit, invited Reed for a visit after he found the home on the internet. The Daughters of the Holy Spirit bought the home from the Morse family in 1915 and added two wings.
Always interested in his family history, Reed remembers coming with his grandmother, Florence Morse Reed, on the Saturdays of Memorial Day weekends to take a drive by the former family home and to put flowers on the graves of relatives in the Grove Street Cemetery. It was a loving annual ritual.
His grandmother's father, mill owner George Milton Morse, started construction of the mansion on Church Street in 1868 and it took two years to build, according to family history. The Morses had five sons and five daughters, according to Putnam history expert Fabiola Cutler.
One of the many family stories passed down through the generations certainly made a difference in Reed's life:
The Morses were very very Baptist, and it was a time period when many newborns did not survive long. When George M. Morse's son, Stillman F. Morse, was born, one of the family's maids, a devout Catholic, snuck the baby out of the home and had him baptized. He lived. Stillman F. Morse was Reed's great-grandfather. Maybe he would have lived, maybe not. But Reed is grateful that he did live and clearly enjoys the story.
Sister Irene, archivist for the Daughters of the Holy Spirit, served as tour guide, showing Reed the original parlors, the entrances, ornate lighting, foyers, the sweeping staircase, the grounds and the carriage house. The Daughters of the Holy Spirit's additions were also part of the tour. Director of Development Francoise Gauthier said Reed contacted her via email after he found the family homestead /Daughters of the Holy Spirit on the internet. He emailed family photos of the mansion and the Sisters invited him to see the home.
An upbeat Reed drank in nearly very corner of the old homestead. Thrilled to be there, he said what sparked a real urgency for finding out more about his family history was a fire at his brother's home. All his brother's early family photographs were lost, as well as an antique chair. Each child of George M. Morse had a small chair with a rounded back, Reed believes for church. The loss of the chair and the photographs inspired Reed to research the Morse Mansion and to share all his Morse photographs with the current owners of the homestead, the Daughters of the Holy Spirit.