Morris Jesup was quite a guy.
In 1908 the successful businessman (his money came from selling railroad supplies) provided the funds for what is now the Westport Library. Located on the corner of the Post Road (then called State Street) and Main Street, its original name was the Morris K. Jesup Memorial Library. (The “K” stood for Ketchum, another noted Westport name.)
He died just 4 months before its dedication, after donating both the land and $5,000 for construction.
Among his other accomplishments, Morris Jesup grew an amazing mustache.
The Library was not Jesup’s only gift. He was a major benefactor of the American Museum of Natural History. He also commissioned a 5-year anthropological expedition to Alaska and Siberia.
Which is why today the northernmost piece of Greenland is named … Cape Morris Jesup.
Cape Morris Jesup on May 16, 1900.
Native Westporter Jeff Van Gelder has been following an on-line Yale University course, taught by noted American history professor David Blight.
He recently mentioned George Washington Carver, in passing. Van Gelder clicked on Wikipedia, to learn more about the agricultural scientist and inventor.
There — in a section titled “Tuskegee Institute” — Van Gelder read this:
Carver designed a mobile classroom to take education out to farmers. He called it a “Jesup wagon” after the New York financier and philanthropist Morris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding to support the program.
That led him further down the internet rabbit hole, to this:
(Booker T.) Washington directed his faculty to “take their teaching into the community.” Carver responded by designing a “movable school” that students built. The wagon was named for Morris K. Jesup, a New York financier who gave Washington the money to equip and operate the “movable school.”
The first movable school was a horse-drawn vehicle called a Jesup Agricultural Wagon. Later it was a mechanized truck, still called a Jesup Wagon, that carried agricultural exhibits to county fairs and community gatherings.
By 1930, the “Booker T. Washington Agricultural School on Wheels” carried a nurse, a home demonstration agent, an agricultural agent, and an architect to share the latest techniques with rural people. Later, community services were expanded, and educational films and lectures were circulated in local churches and schools. The “movable school” was the cornerstone of Tuskegee’s extension services and epitomized the Institute’s doctrines of self-sufficiency and self-improvement.
A “Jesup wagon.” (Photo courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)
“06880”‘s tagline is “Where Westport meets the world.” Including today — amazingly — both the northernmost piece of land in Greenland, and George Washington Carver.
(To learn more about Morris Jesup, click here.)
(“06880” has a history of relying on reader support. Please click here to help.)
George Washington Carver