Jedediah Morse, Jr. was born in Woodstock, Conn., on Aug. 23, 1761, his father was Deacon Jedediah Morse Senior, a Congregationalist minister, and his mother was Sarah Child Morse. Jedediah’s education was both at home and in a local academy. He graduated from Yale in 1783. While Morse was still in college, he decided to become a minister and to support his studies he served as a schoolmaster. He found that the available geography textbooks were inaccurate, so he compiled materials on American geography and published them as Geography Made Easy in 1784.

This was the first geography textbook by an American; with his continued work in geography, he earned the informal title of “the father of American geography”

1789 was a great year for Jedediah Morse, he accepted a pastorate with the First Congregational Church of Charlestown, Mass., and about the same time, he married Elizabeth Ann Breese of New Jersey.

His eldest son, Samuel F. B. Morse, was the inventor of the telegraph and the Morse code.

As a minister, Morse defended orthodox Christian tenets against the teaching of the Unitarians. He helped found a seminary at Andover, Mass., for the purpose that Congregational theology would continue to flourish.

Morse investigated conditions of the American Indian, as a U.S. War Department agent. His report, which included a plan for putting right, American Indian problems, was presented to Congress in 1822.

The most famous quote by Jedediah Morse is from one of his sermons. He said, “To the kindly influence of Christianity, we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys”. Further he said "In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom". He went on to say, "Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them. Morse continued preparing further publications in American history and geography, throughout his life. He died on June 9, 1826, in New Haven, Conn.