Finding information on the elusive Dorcas Morse was not easy. As a matter of fact, it was a fairly challenging project, considering the fact that she was female and the vast majority of historical sources older than two hundred years make very little mention of women. Most of the information consisted of her family and kin, especially the influential Samuel Morse and the Lieutenant Samuel Morse (her brother). References were made to later female Morses, but they all existed around the 19th century and were all likely to have been rather distantly related to Dorcas.

Sadly, all the attention little Dorcas received was date of birth and death, date of marriage, parents, husband, and children conceived. After searching the whole stack of Morse files at the Medfield Historical Society, these were the only references concerning her life, except for a passing mention in The History of Medfield about her and her husband’s residence in the Peak House. Because of the scarcity of resources, it was necessary to infer many things about her, for example, her family life. But then, this was not exactly difficult either, since there was a tremendous amount of information about the rest of her family.

Lastly, I went online and searched the web genealogies, but they repeated exactly the same preliminary information and nothing more. In conclusion, this was a very interesting and educational project, where I learned to use creative thinking strategies to supplement the gaps in historical records.

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