The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life. Allison Chisolm
Paper was in short supply in the mid-nineteenth century, as it had to be made from flax fiber, rags or linen. The cheaper and faster wood-pulp process of paper making did not become commercialized until the late 1860s, and the brown “Kraft” paper associated with today’s paper bags still later. A proprietary paper mill would have enabled Morgan Brothers to control their raw material costs and ensure a greater profit, as Leonard Whitney had done. Before they invested in a paper mill, Morgan told his brother about inquiries he had made regarding straw paper, available at far lower prices than the cost of paper they had agreed to with Whitney in Watertown three years earlier.
The brothers eventually established a manufacturing facility outside Coatesville, about 35 miles west of Philadelphia in the Chester Valley. They selected a good location. The unincorporated town, known as Valley before 1867, sat along the Brandywine River and had two rail lines passing through it, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Wilmington and Northern, as well as the nation’s first turnpike, the Philadelphia to Lancaster Turnpike. The machinery to make paper bags did not require a large footprint—three machines and the shafting to drive them required a space of 40 feet by 60 feet—so they could manufacture bags in either a city or countryside facility with steam power. But it is more likely they established a paper mill to supply their own bag machines. Chester Valley also would have provided the space and resources for a paper mill. The town had a healthy industrial base, with the Lukens Rolling Mill, flour mills, cotton and woolen mills and other iron and paper producers.
As the letterhead indicated, Morgan Brothers expanded their product line to include “carte envelopes.” In July of 1862, Morgan’s friend Edward L. Wilson assigned his patent for “picture envelopes” to Charles. A drafting tools salesman, Wilson had his own business, Wilson & Hood, in Philadelphia.
WARTIME
The Morgan family had been in Philadelphia less than a year before the April 13, 1861 attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina marked the onset of the Civil War. Emotions ran high in the days that followed. If a business did not have an American flag in their window, crowds would gather and demand they produce one. As nearly every business displayed their patriotism, those without flags stood out. With fifth floor offices, Morgan Brothers were not likely to have had to face down a mob. By the end of that first week, city representatives called on Philadelphians to channel their patriotic energies into forming 100-man companies for home service.
For the next three months, most businesses closed by 4 p.m., or 3 p.m. on Saturdays, to permit their employees, new recruits for the Home Guard, to attend training. Currency changed its look, too. The federal government, unable to cover new debts incurred for war supplies and equipment, issued paper money, known familiarly as “greenbacks” in 1861 and 1862.
So many Philadelphians volunteered to serve the Union, city residents filled most of 50 infantry and cavalry regiments, with nearly 100,000 volunteering for military duty by the end of the war. No local draft was required until July 1863, in the aftermath of the bloody battlefields at Gettysburg, when volunteer numbers declined as a result of a mandatory six-month service “or until the end of the present emergency.” The date was left to federal officials to determine, creating an unwelcome degree of uncertainty for would-be volunteers.
Morgan and his brother would have been exempt from military service due to their occupation as manufacturers. But Morgan wanted to serve in some way, and requested an appointment to the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association. Established in July 1862 for “the purpose of visiting hospitals with a view to assist, by money or other means, soldiers from the New England States,” the Association requested from each hospital director that its volunteer members “will be permitted to have access to the wards for that purpose, if in your opinion it would not be injurious to the sick men.”
DEATH AND WAR
By 1862, the household of Harriet and Charles was well established at 222 North Second Street in what was known as the North Ward of Camden, New Jersey. They continued to live together with eight-year-old Harry, Charles’ brother Henry and his father Hiram. Their other brother, Cyrus, lived a block away on Penn Street. Hatty was pregnant, due in the summer.
From their residential neighborhood, Charles, Henry and Hiram could walk to the ferry landing, commuting daily across the Delaware River to the office in Philadelphia for a nickel or less.
The business at 217 Lodge St. was not far along Market Street, straight off the Camden landing. The office address was a good one—only three blocks east of Independence Square and near the old Pennsylvania Bank. They rented space from Merrihew & Thompson, the printers on the first floor. Stephen E. Merrihew had served as a witness to one of Morgan’s legal documents even before Morgan’s relocation south to Philadelphia.
Despite the drumbeats of war all around the city, the business was growing and family life continued its routines. As her due date drew near, Hatty decided to escape Philadelphia’s summer heat and travelled back to Clinton, where her family could attend the birth. In July 1862, she went into labor, but had a complicated delivery. She delivered a baby son, Hiram, but both mother and baby tragically died shortly thereafter, on July 20. She was 31. Home births were the standard for the era, and a mortality rate of five deaths for every 1,000 births remained the average for most of the 19th century. “Childbed fever” was a fear of every pregnant woman, and in a time without awareness of bacterial infection or the vital importance of hygiene at birth, death following labor was all too common.
There are no surviving diaries or letters from this period of personal loss and grief, but Charles Morgan evidently continued operating Morgan Brothers with his brother. At some point after his wife’s death, Morgan became an active member of the New England Soldiers’ Relief Association.
He purchased a diary to track his work with Civil War wounded. He titled it “Record of New England Soldiers in U.S. Hospital at Turners Lane” and dated it Philadelphia, November 1, 1862.
While the streets of Philadelphia saw no battles, the Civil War was sending more wounded soldiers into the city’s hospitals throughout the balance of 1862. Philadelphia was home to two of the nation’s largest military hospitals, with thousands of beds in each one, but the numbers of wounded required even more facilities. At one point, the city had 24 military hospitals, which treated an estimated 157,000 soldiers and sailors by the war’s end.
Turner’s Lane Military Hospital was a far smaller, 400-bed facility built in north Philadelphia at the end of the summer of 1862. It became the city’s research hospital dedicated to nervous diseases and the site of the nation’s first neurological studies. Soldiers who had undergone amputations suffered from such post-traumatic disorders as “ghost limb,” feeling pain in the missing limb. They found special care at Turner’s Lane.
Turner’s Lane Hospital, c. 1864
While the Association paperwork glued into Morgan’s diary, which must have served as his pass into the hospital, was dated July 1, 1862, the first entries on soldiers and their state of health date from November 10 and continue through the winter into 1863. The diary, which indexes some of the soldiers alphabetically, has 84 entries, with every New England state represented. Each entry includes some detail about the soldier, listing their name, rank, company, bed number, ward number, and in certain entries, their hometown, and penciled in at bedside, their medical condition. According to his notes, soldiers at the Turner’s Lane hospital suffered from “fever followed by Rheumatism,” chronic diarrhea, “dyspepsia,” chronic bronchitis, contusions on hip and spine and “lung difficulty with night sweats.”
On two occasions, he noted their wishes, while there is no record of whether they were fulfilled: “Wants to be transferred,” he wrote of one soldier, and for another, “Wants stockings.”
His notes also detail what happened next for these soldiers. While a few returned to their regiments, several transferred to other hospitals for further care. At least three deserted, with Morgan