Kansas Town Named After Local Captain Celebrating Adoption of French Hamlet

Capt. Ebenezer (Rattler) Morgan, one of the great figures in New London whaling history, is commemorated in a pageant today with which Morganville, Kans., is observing its adoption of the farming community of Feves, France.

Morgan, the founder of the Kansas town with a population of 200, is regarded as an almost legendary character there. He went to Kansas in 1870, soon after retiring from the sea, staked a claim and bought an 800-acre cattle ranch.

The old whaling captain's experience as a rancher fits well into the theme of the pageant, entitled One World or None. For Morgan, who dreamed during years at sea of "getting away from the world" on a wild west cattle ranch, found he couldn't do it.

Gave Ranch as Townsite

So he returned to spend his declining years in the east. But when he left Kansas, he donated his ranch as the townsite of Morganville.

Morganville's population of 200 is about equal to that of Feves, located in Lorraine near Metz. Feves was hard hit by the war and, among other things, lost all its livestock.

The Morganville adoption is part of a nationwide movement toward direct affiliation between towns here and abroad, arranged by Operation Democracy, Inc., of 369 Lexington Avenue, New York City. So far, Operation Democracy has well over 200 such affiliations under way.

According to Charles L. Todd, executive secretary of the organization, Morganville is the smallest community in America to have tried the plan out.

Left a Million

His biography indicates that Morgan, like the town he founded, was small of stature, but great of heart. He was born in Boston in 1817, orphaned young and signed aboard a whaler as a cabin boy at the age of ten. When he died in 1890, he left an estate worth close to a million dollars - and the dollar was worth 100 cents then, not 40 as now.

He became a master at 21, and during the 41 years he spent at sea, he made many successful voyages, almost all from this port. It is a moot point whether his nickname "Rattler," came from his "rattling good voyages" or, his loquacious nature.

But Alexander Starbuck's authoritative volume on the American whaling industry credits Morgan with the "best voyage on record." This was a cruise in 1864-65 in the Pioneer, which brought back 1,391 barrels of whale oil and 22,650 pounds of whalebone, yielding a profit of $114,000 on a $36,000 investment. The Pioneer, incidentally, was the first steam whaler fitted out in the United States.

Profited front Russian Agreement

In connection with the "One World" pageant honoring his memory, it is notable that Morgan was one of the first to profit through a Russian-American agreement of his own day: In 1867, Russia ceded Alaska and its outlying islands to the United States. And in the following year, Morgan was the first to plant Old Glory on Alaskan soil - on a trip from which he returned with 45,000 sealskins.

No descendants of the redoubtable captain now reside in this area. His home in later years was at 181 Monument street, Groton. He was a confirmed Republican, who outfitted "Morgan's Zouaves" in baggy red pants, blue tunics and gold braid to march in the political torchlight processions. His religion extended to supplying outbound whalers with boatloads of Bibles.

And in his old age, when neither of his two sons could climb the flagpole in his back yard in Groton to set the halyards straight, Morgan gave them a disgusted look, whipped up the pole and fixed the ropes himself.


Evening Day
New London, Connecticut