A CENTURY OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES. 227 
Thus we learn that geography teaching began with a few 
geographic notes inserted in a spelling book published just 
prior to Washington’s inauguration. 
Dr. Morse, to whom Webster here refers, was the Rev. Jede- 
diah Morse, minister of the Congregational church in Charles¬ 
town, Massachusetts. He published in 1789 an octavo vol¬ 
ume of 534 pages, entitled The American Geography. This 
book was, four years later, greatly enlarged and published in 
two volumes with the title The American Universal Geography. 
A fourth edition, extensively revised, appeared in 1801 or 1802, 
a fifth in 1805, a sixth in 1812, and a seventh in 1819. The 
fifth edition of 1805, and presumably all later ones, was accom¬ 
panied by a little quarto atlas containing about sixty maps and 
entitled A New and Elegant General Atlas, drawn by Arrow- 
smith and Lewis. 
As a special writer on geography, Morse appears to have 
been the first American in the field. He continued to write 
for many years, and after his death the son published revised 
editions of his father’s works. As Morse’s geographies, or 
abridgments of them made by himself or others, were exten¬ 
sively used in the schools, we may now learn from them 
something of the “ state of the art,” as our patent experts and 
attorneys would say, of geographic teaching in the early years 
of the century. 
It is worth while to note, in passing, the high esteem in 
which the work done by Morse was held. The numerous 
editions called for and sold at home and its translation and 
sale abroad attest its value. Samuel G. Goodrich, who wrote 
so much over the name Peter Parley, referring to his boy¬ 
hood school days, about 1800 to 1810, in Ridgefield, Con¬ 
necticut, says: 
“ When I was there two Webster’s grammars and one or two Dwight’s 
geographies were in use. The latter was without maps or illustrations, 
and was in fact little more than an expanded table of contents taken from 
Morse’s Universal Geography—the mammoth monument of American 
learning and genius of that age and generation.” 
The third edition of Morse’s abridgment was published 
in 1791. As to maps it contains only crude diagrams of the 
