APPENDIX B
• Born In 1818 near Aurora, New York, of a Welsh family.
• He attended Cayuga Academy in Aurora, Western New York before going to Union College, from which he graduated in 1840.
• 1840 returned to Aurora, where he studied law.
• In 1844 he moved to Rochester N. Y. where he established himself as an attorney.
• In 1846-49 Morgan had an interest in the findings, of E.G. Squier and Davis who were exploring and surveying ancient Mound sites, as reported in their 1848 book; Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, which was published as the first publication of the Smithsonian. He also took a real interest in Squier’s 1849 and 1851 books.
• In 1851 he married his cousin, Mary Elizabeth Steele and moved to a house on Fitzhugh Street in Rochester. They had three children.
• Morgan’s ethnological career began when he joined a young men’s club, the Grand Order of the Iroquois, in Aurora after graduating from college. In order to pattern this club upon the famous Iroquois confederacy, Morgan undertook an exhaustive study of the Iroquois, their history, and their culture, particularly the Seneca tribe. The results of his research were published in 1851 as The League of the Ho-dé-nosau-nee, or Iroquois.
• Having business interests in the 1850s as an attorney, Morgan represented both mining and railroad interests, having investment interests in some of these ventures in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
• As an Attorney representing the expansion of mining and railroad interests westward, he debated questions of land rights, addressing questions as to who had the rights to the land of the Indians, government, business interests or settlers.
• He would go on to serve two terms in the New York State legislature in the State Assembly and State Senate.
• Morgan wrote Diffusion Against Centralization published 1852 in Rochester, N.Y. Morgan questioned the diffusion of other cultures and the findings as to the origins of the mound building cultures by Squier and Davis and others.
• Morgan’s interest in ethnology was revived in 1856, when he attended a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Retired from his legal practice in Rochester, New York in 1862, although he continued to represent some of the Michigan corporations in which he had interests.
• In 1868 Morgan was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• On his English trip in 1870–1871 Morgan met or corresponded with and studied the writings of some of the most leading anthropologist theorists such as Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, McLennan, Lubbock, Maine and J.J. Bachofen.
• Morgan did research in an effort to establish an Asiatic origin connection of the American Indians. He began field research in which he circulated questionnaires to distant lands in the hope of obtaining a kinship relationship to the American Indian, resulting in the claim that he had found a kinship relationship with the Indian populations of America with the Indian populations found in India.
• The Smithsonian Institution in 1871, published his monumental work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, which established him as a subject matter authority.
• His interpretation of the kinship terminologies and his year of study, meeting with some of the foremost anthropologists of England led him to formulate a comprehensive theory of social evolution; that families evolved through the stages of evolution from Savagery to Civilization.
• In 1875 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
• Morgan’s visit to England and his association with a number of scientific associations stirred his research and writings and led him to the publication in 1877 of his best-known and most influential work, Ancient Society. The book attempts to reach out and touch upon many aspects of the American culture, influencing how society views and values race, origins, religion, populations, private property rights, children, marriage and family.
• In 1879 Morgan was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He resided in Rochester until his death on December 17, 1881. He was buried in a tomb in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York. Morgan was cited by Darwin, Marx and Freud, the revolutionary minds of the ages, and was referred to as the most influential American social scientist of the nineteenth century. He was part of the Rochester business establishment and a state legislator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. As a founder of the anthropology subsection of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he was the first anthropologist to serve as the association’s president. As the founder of kinship studies (a systematic study of the family) and by pushing God to the side, Morgan traced the human movement from the hard ground to the cave to the comforts of the Victorian parlor. He was considered the theorist of “progress”, a student and scholar of social evolution, and one of the most important scientists and social theorists of the nineteenth century.