5801 Highway 201: The Major Morse House

Architecture Style: Modified Vernacular

Built: About 1863

Samuel Morse and Lydia Church farmed and prospered on their new grant of land south of the Annapolis River.  Their son, Samuel Morse II of Paradise, saw new possibilities and founded a successful mill complex on the Paradise Brook: a sawmill, a flour mill, and an oatmeal mill. He left these mills jointly to his sons:  Samuel III, Elias, Major, and Martyn, and they took turns operating them. Major’s son, Samuel Kennedy Morse, was the miller after his father and uncles.

The family built four beautiful homes clustered around the mills and each other. The first home was the Classical Georgian house of founder Samuel II; Martyn, married to Susanna Leonard, inherited the family home. Major built the pleasant home pictured above and married  Margaret Kennedy. Elias built his home in the style of a Colonial townhouse and married  Lucy Boehner. The oldest son, Samuel III, married Lucy Boehner’s sister Charlotte and built just west of this. A whole lot of family life!

The “rumble of the old mill wheel” (W.I. Morse, Local History of Paradise) was a thumping heartbeat all day long in the village. For over a hundred years, the muted clatter of horses and wagons and the melody of the ox bells meant that the Morse mills were busy. But by 1913, only the sawmill was left, and other families lived in the Morse homes.

The Boehner family of Ansbach, Germany, and Lunenburg were in Paradise by 1830, when Maria, Lucy and Charlotte’s sister,  taught in the Paradise School. Aubrey Boehner, their relative, and Edna [Durling] bought this property. The sawmill closed in 1954, but not before the  Morse name gave way to Boehner, both for the house and the brook, and  Aubrey’s oxen became part of the picturesque landscape of  Paradise. The Spicers lived here for many years, and then in 1972, the Hunters brought us the “Born Again Barn”, stirring memories of that 18th-century revivalism, when “New Light” preachers like Henry Alline (after whom Aaron Morse named a son) stirred so many into angst and ecstasy,  founded the congregations that became Baptist, and baptized converts in the millpond.

The Meisner’s and Cursley’s were wonderful neighbours, each improving the property. The Cursley’s horse paddocks were a new, pleasing landscape over the lane.