Representative women of New England/Ellen B. Morey

by Mary H. Graves

ELLEN BEALE MOREY was born in Orfordville, Grafton County, N.H., daughter of Royal and Josephine (Johnson) Beal. Through her father she claims descent from Jonathan Carver, the traveller, who explored in 1766-68 the region immediately west and north-west of the Great Lakes, then inhabited only by Indians, with whom he was in most friendly relations. The story of his receiving from them the gift of a large tract of land, including the sites of the present cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, though not found in the sketches of Mr. Carver in the biographical cyclopaedias, has in recent years been given newspaper publicity. The deed is said to have been recorded upon a rock in a cave near the Falls of St. Anthony. Jonathan Carver died in London in 1780. He had gone there to make arrangements for the publication of a book giving an account of his travels and explorations (a few copies of which are now in existence), and also, it is said, to try to secure a regular deed of the land granted to him by the Indians.

On her mother’s side Mrs. Morey is a descendant of Colonel Thomas Johnson, of Newbury, Vt., who served in the war of the Revolution, and who was in official correspondence with General Washington, autograph letters from whom are still preserved in the family. Very early in life Ellen Beale manifested that power and individuality of thought which led her to differ materially with her family and teachers in matters of opinion and practice. Born into a pro-slavery family who had, in earlier times, been slave-holders, she espoused the anti-slavery cause at a time when it meant disgrace and ostracism to do so. When a mere child, she evinced that passion for music which has been the dominating influence in her life, playing from memory at four years of age selections from the great composers which she had heard her father play upon the pipe organ, then as now a part of the family establishment.

ELLEN BEALE MOREY ELLEN BEALE MOREY

At eleven she became organist of the village church, and since that time she hits played some of the largest organs in this country and in Europe. Her mother was her instructor in the higher mathematics, literature, and Latin; and her father was her first teacher in music. It was the custom of the family to gather in the music room at evening time to sing, and on these occasions the old mansion would ring with the strains of anthem and oratorio, to the accompaniment of organ, piano, violin, and violoncello, performers upon each instrument being found in the family circle. To her familiarity with music of the best class in her childhood, Mrs. Morey attributes much of her success.

At eighteen years of age she commenced study with Junius W. Hill, of Boston, and remained with him until her marriage to Herbert E. Morey in 1874. Of this union there have been five children—Eleanor Stevens, Ernest Manuel (now deceased), Hilda Evangeline, David Beale, and Laura Carver.

David B. and Almira (Bailey) Morey, parents of Herbert E. Morey, were prominent among the abolitionists, contributing of their means to the support of the movement; and their house was a station on the underground railroad. David B. Morey was closely associated with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbury, and other prominent anti-slavery leaders. On one occasion he protected Parker Pillsbury from a mob, holding them off at the point of a pistol. When the war broke out, and troops were starting for the front, the town illuminated. He refused to illuminate his house until he knew whether the Union was to be with or without slavery. And in this he persisted, although notified by the town authorities, who were at that time pro-slavery in sentiment, that they could not promise him protection. At the time of John Brown's raid he with others hired Tremont Temple and persisted in occupying it in spite of the opposition of a pro-slavery mob encouraged by police assistance. He was a charter member of the Theodore Parker Fraternity.

David B. Morey was a cousin of Samuel Morey, from whom it is said that Fulton got his ideas of the steamboat. His wife, Almira Bailey, was daughter of Timothy Bailey, the first president of the First National Bank of Maiden.

In 1876 Mrs. Morey went abroad to pursue her studies in piano, organ, and theory with Reinecke and Paul, of Leipsic, and Dr. Theodore Kullak, of Berlin. Subsequent seasons were spent in Rome, Florence, Milan, and London, in the study of vocal music and instrumentation. Mrs. Morey in 1879 organized a chorus and orchestra, which she herself conducted, being the first woman, so far as is known, to use the conductor's baton. Her skill as a director and chorus leader is well known to the musical world; and, had it not been for her extreme modesty and disinclination for public life, her name and fame would have been world-wide. There are few men, it has been said, among those famous in the world to-day, who have the skill to teach, or the magnetic personality to control and get results from a body of singers, which she possesses. She has spent several seasons at Baireuth, and has been a close student of Wagner and his methods. Indeed, music has meant a life work to this remarkable woman. Through it she has striven to ennoble mankind by bringing to it a consciousness of those great thoughts which she conceives to be embodied in all art. As she says: "Music was never either an amusement or an aestheticism to me, but that solemn and ineffable voice in the soul which has been proclaiming its messages down through the ages in all true art, whether in form, color, or sound." This sentiment she brings out most emphatically in her lectures upon music, of which she has several.

Mrs. Morey has always kept herself in the background, but her pupils, who are scattered throughout the land, can testify, as did one who has achieved fame in a large city: "I was one of Mrs. Morey 's earliest pupils, and I have never forgotten either the impetus to work, the emulation of high ideals which she instilled into me, or the inspiration which made study with her a delight."

While she was director of music and organist of the First Church in Maiden, the musical critic of one of Boston's leading papers wrote the following in a report of one of the church services: "Mention has not been made of the organ prelude nor of the handling of the organ throughout the solo and chorus work through failure to appreciate the versatility and skill required in their execution. The gifted woman who has brought the music in this church to rank with the first in the land, and who in the last ten years has done more to ennoble and spiritualize the work of music in the church than any one within the writer's knowledge, brings to her position not only special aptitude, but skill acquired by intense and unremitting study, an artistic style born of acquaintanceship with the best music of many peoples and lands, and, what is still more important, a realization of the soul of things which finds utterance in the majestic strains of Te Deum and oratorio. If the musical attractions of this church are sufficient to call the attention of musicians from Boston, who, like myself, come on all extra occasions and frequently at other times, purposely to hear its chorus singing, it is safe to say it must possess some distinguishing excellence. I am only one of several who have expressed the opinion that, were this choir within Boston limits, the present church edifice would be entirely inadequate to seat the people who would throng there to hear its music. Mrs. Morey combines genius and physical strength to a degree seldom found in woman, and from this union we expect and find great things."

Mrs. Morey's extensive travel has brought her in touch with the musical and artistic centres of Europe. Her summers for twenty years have been spent among the Alps of Switzerland, Northern Italy, and the Tyrol, into whose very fastnesses she has penetrated. She has made her abode with peasants and princes alike, from the humblest chalet of Switzerland to the abodes of England's aristocracy; amid the sand-dunes and windmills of the Low Countries and the castles of the Rhine; in the wastes of the Sahara and under the shadow of Egypt's great monuments.

Cosmopolitan alike by travel and temperament, finding home and friends in many lands, her heart, nevertheless, remains loyal to the granite hills of the land of her birth — the Switzerland of America.