Allen Hungerford Morgan (August 12, 1925 – May 13, 1990) of Wayland, Massachusetts was a 2d Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, a well-known ornithologist, an aggressive advocate for open space and a healthy environment, an excellent tennis player, an Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society bringing it to the forefront of the nascent environmental movement, the primary Founder and first Executive Director of Sudbury Valley Trustees (SVT), and a recipient of the Environmental Master Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the first time the EPA made the Award.
"Alan is a born and gifted field naturalist, is one of the best and most active of the younger observers of birds in the State of Massachusetts and furnishes monthly observations of interest for the Bird Bulletin of the New England Museum of Natural History in Boston and for my own Season Reports on New England Bird life in the National Audubon Magazine." (Griscom, 1942).
"He was a conservationist long before it was fashionable, and an inspiring public speaker who could galvanize his audience into action. His untiring spirit, unwavering beliefs, and powers of persuasion brought him success time and time again as he rescued thousands of acres of open space from the threat of development." (Atkins, 1990) Allen was a protégé of the famous ornithologist Ludlow Griscom.
Allen compiled a life list exceeding 600 different birds. He saw a Black-backed Gull, the first such sighting recorded in the Sudbury Valley. He and two friends saw a Cattle Egret during April 1952, the first time a Cattle Egret had been recorded in North America. He kept bird journals to record the date, location, time, kind, and characteristics of birds that he saw, the first entry of which is dated February 18, 1936 and the last of which is dated in the late 1960s. Allen attended Wayland, Massachusetts public schools, Mount Prospect School for Boys in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts where he played football.
His interest in ornithology arose at age 9 when David Garrison, a teacher at Mount Prospect and friend of Ludlow Griscom, came to class and spoke about having seen an Orange-crowned Warbler at Totten's Pond behind the school (a rare event in Eastern Massachusetts). Allen's first public lecture on birds and conservation was made to the Wayland Garden Club at age 13. Having ridden the eighteen miles from Wayland to Cambridge on his bicycle to attend meetings of the Harvard Ornithological Club, he was admitted as a member at age 14 in 1939, the first non-Harvard student to be so honored.
Garrison introduced Allen to the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Charles Russell "Russ" Mason. Allen had a job cleaning and cataloging a collection of bird skins with the curator of the Boston Society of Natural History during the summer of 1940. He became a member of Mass Audubon at age 16 in 1941. That relationship gave him access to a bird-song record and color slides that he used that year for another lecture to the Wayland Garden Club.
He left high school halfway through his senior year at Weston High School in 1943 to matriculate at Bowdoin College. He joined the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve and was employed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work at the Maine coast on a gull control project. The Marine Corps called him up during July 1943 and sent him to Dartmouth College for officer training. He served in the Marine Corps from 1944 through 1946, first in North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, then to California where he was stationed to be in the first wave of Marines to land on the Japanese mainland, a mission precluded by the atom bombs.
He graduated from Bowdoin in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, the year in which the first of his three children Charles Carter Morgan (named after Allen's brother who died young in 1938 of a ruptured appendix) was born. He followed in the footsteps of his father, taking a job at Aetna Casualty & Surety Company in Hartford, Connecticut as an insurance underwriter. He left Aetna in 1950 to join his father, Charles Thompson Morgan (also a life insurance professional) at 31 Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Later that year the Marine Corps recalled him because of the Korean War. He returned to his father's life insurance practice in 1951 after resigning his commission with the Marine Corps.
He learned from friends that Richard "Dick" Borden, the famous wildlife film-maker, had captured a Cattle Egret on film taken merely five months previously. Allen met with Dick, viewed the film and confirmed the recording. After writing scripts for several of Dick's films, Allen began shooting his own 16 millimeter films and also sold footage to the Disney Company.
Allen presented his "Conservation is Common Sense" lecture extensively, making more than 100 presentations in some years. Allen began campaigning in 1953 to preserve "open space" for active and passive recreation as well as habitats for wildlife. That year he gathered six friends (B. Allen Benjamin, Dr. George K. Lewis, Henry Parker, Willis B. Ryder, Richard Stackpole, and Roger P. Stokey) at his home "Windyhill" in Wayland. He led them in founding Sudbury Valley Trustees, Inc. (SVT), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to conserve land and protect wildlife habitat in the Concord, Assabet, and Sudbury river watersheds of Eastern Massachusetts. The Marsh Wren on Cattail logo of SVT, the preparation of which he supervised, is part of his enduring legacy. Dick Borden, the new Executive Director of Mass Audubon, asked Allen to join its Board of Directors in 1956. Also in 1956, Allen cleared the woods from the marsh behind his home at "Windyhill" in Wayland, Massachusetts, hired a drag line to dig out the swamp and build a dam with a spillway to create a pond stocked with trout for wildlife habitat.
Less than a year later in November, 1957, Allen was appointed Audubon's fifth Executive Vice President. Under Allen's supervision, Mass Audubon established its first scientific staff, expanded its educational programs and nature centers, and established numerous wildlife sanctuaries. He traveled extensively on behalf of Mass Audubon and lobbied successfully for conservation legislation at both the state and federal levels. He tackled causes like pesticide regulation while never losing sight of Audubon's origins in bird conservation.
Major accomplishments during his tenure (1959-1980) included passage of Massachusetts wetlands protection legislation in the 1960s and 1970s (the first state wetlands laws in the nation), the first conservation restriction with the transfer of the development rights of 156.6 acres of shore front property in South Dartmouth and Westport to Mass Audubon, and the milestone in 1976 of 10,000 acres of open space acquired. Allen installed a solar heating system as a model project at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, a year before President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels at the White House. He supervised Mass Audubon's transition from a bird watching and educational group of 4,500 members and 65 permanent staff in 1957 to the largest and most influential conservation organization in the region with a permanent staff of 145 and nearly 28,000 members by the time he left in 1980.
Mass Audubon established the Allen Morgan Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990 as a tribute to him. Mass Audubon awards this prestigious prize to "an individual who demonstrates the dedication, passion, and daring that Morgan exhibited in protecting the natural world." Similarly, SVT established the "Morgan Volunteer Award" in his memory which is awarded annually for commitment and service to SVT. The Marsh Wren on Cattail theme of the SVT logo finds further expression in that Award.
Allen engaged in extensive public service. He served on the Wayland Planning Board from 1958 to 1972, and founded the Wayland Conservation Commission in 1959, serving as its Chairman until 1972. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislative Oversight Committee on Water Pollution in 1966 and Chairman of Governor Francis W. Sargent's Committee for Reorganizing the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources from 1969 to 1971. Allen either served on or consulted with numerous environmental committees, boards, and government commissions, including SVT, The Environmental Policy Center (Washington, D.C.), the Center for Energy Policy, the New England Wildflower Preservation Society, the Wayland Conservation Commission, the Elbanobscot Foundation, Inc., the National Wildlife Federation, the national Rural Environment and Conservation Advisory Board—Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Conservation Council, and the Coastal Wetland Action Committee. He was one of three representatives of the United States at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm during 1972.
After leaving Mass Audubon, he was chosen a Fellow of Saybrook College at Yale University in 1980 turned his full-time attention to SVT as its first Executive Director. He expanded the SVT membership base, hired staff, and supervised acquisition of significant acreage of open space throughout the Sudbury River watershed while continuing lecturing, consulting, and writing until his death.
Morgan died at the Lahey Clinic in 1990 from prostate cancer a few months prior to his planned retirement in August. Robert "Bob" M. Anderson, an old friend of Allen's, spoke at Allen's memorial service. These are excerpts from what Bob said:
"Allen Morgan brought a singleness of purpose to his life. His life was a touchstone by which the rest of us measured our own commitment to protecting and improving the environment. You were either charging ahead with him, running to catch up, or scrambling to get out of his way. He was a juggernaut of steam and turbines and pistons and vinegar and moral righteousness, relentlessly pushing forward, constantly advancing his position because he believed so fervently that there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. 'What we save now,' he said, 'is all we will ever save.' *** 'The victories are only temporary,' he said, 'but the defeats are all permanent.'"
Allen Hungerford Morgan is descended from four passengers on the Mayflower - John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, Richard Warren (through three different lines of descent), and Francis Cooke: 1. A tenth generation descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, passengers on the Mayflower, 2. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower, through the "Stoddard" line, 3. An eleventh generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Samuel Churchill" line, 4. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line), and 5. A tenth generation descendant of Francis Cooke, a passenger on the Mayflower.
NOTE: The Samuel Churchill and Elizabeth Churchill lines converge with Samuel and Elizabeth from Richard Warren since they were distant cousins who married each other, both being descended from Hannah Pope and Joseph Bartlett, Samuel Churchill being descended from Hannah and Joseph's son Robert Bartlett and Elizabeth Churchill being descended from Hannah and Robert's daughter Hannah Bartlett.
The line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, Mayflower passengers, to Helen Carter is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Stephen Stoddard (son of Jane Gardner and Nathaniel Stoddard) and MARY RICHARDS JOHNSON, daughter of Edwin (or Edward or Edmund) Johnson and MARY RICHARDS JONES, daughter of Samuel Jones and MARY RICHARDS, daughter of Benjamin Richards and ABIGAIL THAYER, daughter of Ephraim Thayer and SARAH BASS, daughter of John Bass and RUTH ALDEN, daughter of JOHN ALDEN and PRISCILLA MULLINSs, Mayflower passengers.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Stoddard" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Mary Richards Johnson and STEPHEN STODDARD, son of Jane Gardner and NATHANIEL STODDARD, son of Nathaniel Stoddar and ELIZABETH SPRAGUE, daughter of Priscilla Knight and JEREMIAH SPRAGUE, son of Anthony Sprague and ELIZABETH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Sarah Cooke and ROBERT BARTLETT, son of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Samuel Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, daughter of Amaziah Churchill and ELIZABETH SYLVESTER, daughter of Joseph Sylvester and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Francis Cooke, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and SARAH COOKE, daughter of Elizabeth Lettice and JACOB COOKE, son of FRANCIS COOKE, Mayflower passenger.
Allen Hungerford Morgan received numerous honors and awards:
Bowdoin College, Honorary Doctor of Science; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Honorary Doctor of Science;
American International College, Honorary Doctor of Laws;
American Motors national Conservation Award;
The Public Relations Society of America, Outstanding Citizen Award;
The National Council of State Garden Clubs, Silver Seal Award;
The New England Wild Flower Society Award for Outstanding Service to Conservation; The Trustees of Reservations Conservation Award;
Middlesex News 1989 Man of the Year; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Masters Award;
Thoreau-Muir Wilderness Prize of the Walden Earthcare Congress; and
Center for Environmental Intern Programs, Founder's Award.
Sources for the foregoing are numerous: the personal memories of Charles Carter Morgan, Allen's first-born son and the originator of this memorial; Ludlow Griscom, Letter of Recommendation to the Director of Admissions, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, December 3, 1942; Atkins, Chester G., Tribute to Allen H. Morgan, United States House of Representatives, 1990; Sudbury Valley Trustees, Spring Newsletter, May, 1990; Obituary, The Boston Globe, May 15, 1990; Obituary, The New York Times, May 15, 1990; Anderson, Robert President of Sudbury Valley Trustees, "In Memory of Allen Morgan," Eulogy delivered at the First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, May 17, 1990, (Insert in the Sudbury Valley Trustees Spring Newsletter, May, 1990); Adams, Thomas Boylston "The man who made Sudbury Valley his monument," The Boston Globe, May 26, 1990; McAdow, Ron "Recalling a conversation with Allen Morgan," Wayland Town Crier, June 7, 1990; Weinberg, Judith "In Person Allen H. Morgan, Executive Director, Sudbury Valley Trustees," MetroWest, Massachusetts News Weekly, June 9, 1989; and Biographical Sketch, The Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Allen H. Morgan Papers, 1923-1990.
"Alan is a born and gifted field naturalist, is one of the best and most active of the younger observers of birds in the State of Massachusetts and furnishes monthly observations of interest for the Bird Bulletin of the New England Museum of Natural History in Boston and for my own Season Reports on New England Bird life in the National Audubon Magazine." (Griscom, 1942).
"He was a conservationist long before it was fashionable, and an inspiring public speaker who could galvanize his audience into action. His untiring spirit, unwavering beliefs, and powers of persuasion brought him success time and time again as he rescued thousands of acres of open space from the threat of development." (Atkins, 1990) Allen was a protégé of the famous ornithologist Ludlow Griscom.
Allen compiled a life list exceeding 600 different birds. He saw a Black-backed Gull, the first such sighting recorded in the Sudbury Valley. He and two friends saw a Cattle Egret during April 1952, the first time a Cattle Egret had been recorded in North America. He kept bird journals to record the date, location, time, kind, and characteristics of birds that he saw, the first entry of which is dated February 18, 1936 and the last of which is dated in the late 1960s. Allen attended Wayland, Massachusetts public schools, Mount Prospect School for Boys in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts where he played football.
His interest in ornithology arose at age 9 when David Garrison, a teacher at Mount Prospect and friend of Ludlow Griscom, came to class and spoke about having seen an Orange-crowned Warbler at Totten's Pond behind the school (a rare event in Eastern Massachusetts). Allen's first public lecture on birds and conservation was made to the Wayland Garden Club at age 13. Having ridden the eighteen miles from Wayland to Cambridge on his bicycle to attend meetings of the Harvard Ornithological Club, he was admitted as a member at age 14 in 1939, the first non-Harvard student to be so honored.
Garrison introduced Allen to the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Charles Russell "Russ" Mason. Allen had a job cleaning and cataloging a collection of bird skins with the curator of the Boston Society of Natural History during the summer of 1940. He became a member of Mass Audubon at age 16 in 1941. That relationship gave him access to a bird-song record and color slides that he used that year for another lecture to the Wayland Garden Club.
He left high school halfway through his senior year at Weston High School in 1943 to matriculate at Bowdoin College. He joined the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve and was employed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work at the Maine coast on a gull control project. The Marine Corps called him up during July 1943 and sent him to Dartmouth College for officer training. He served in the Marine Corps from 1944 through 1946, first in North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, then to California where he was stationed to be in the first wave of Marines to land on the Japanese mainland, a mission precluded by the atom bombs.
He graduated from Bowdoin in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, the year in which the first of his three children Charles Carter Morgan (named after Allen's brother who died young in 1938 of a ruptured appendix) was born. He followed in the footsteps of his father, taking a job at Aetna Casualty & Surety Company in Hartford, Connecticut as an insurance underwriter. He left Aetna in 1950 to join his father, Charles Thompson Morgan (also a life insurance professional) at 31 Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Later that year the Marine Corps recalled him because of the Korean War. He returned to his father's life insurance practice in 1951 after resigning his commission with the Marine Corps.
He learned from friends that Richard "Dick" Borden, the famous wildlife film-maker, had captured a Cattle Egret on film taken merely five months previously. Allen met with Dick, viewed the film and confirmed the recording. After writing scripts for several of Dick's films, Allen began shooting his own 16 millimeter films and also sold footage to the Disney Company.
Allen presented his "Conservation is Common Sense" lecture extensively, making more than 100 presentations in some years. Allen began campaigning in 1953 to preserve "open space" for active and passive recreation as well as habitats for wildlife. That year he gathered six friends (B. Allen Benjamin, Dr. George K. Lewis, Henry Parker, Willis B. Ryder, Richard Stackpole, and Roger P. Stokey) at his home "Windyhill" in Wayland. He led them in founding Sudbury Valley Trustees, Inc. (SVT), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to conserve land and protect wildlife habitat in the Concord, Assabet, and Sudbury river watersheds of Eastern Massachusetts. The Marsh Wren on Cattail logo of SVT, the preparation of which he supervised, is part of his enduring legacy. Dick Borden, the new Executive Director of Mass Audubon, asked Allen to join its Board of Directors in 1956. Also in 1956, Allen cleared the woods from the marsh behind his home at "Windyhill" in Wayland, Massachusetts, hired a drag line to dig out the swamp and build a dam with a spillway to create a pond stocked with trout for wildlife habitat.
Less than a year later in November, 1957, Allen was appointed Audubon's fifth Executive Vice President. Under Allen's supervision, Mass Audubon established its first scientific staff, expanded its educational programs and nature centers, and established numerous wildlife sanctuaries. He traveled extensively on behalf of Mass Audubon and lobbied successfully for conservation legislation at both the state and federal levels. He tackled causes like pesticide regulation while never losing sight of Audubon's origins in bird conservation.
Major accomplishments during his tenure (1959-1980) included passage of Massachusetts wetlands protection legislation in the 1960s and 1970s (the first state wetlands laws in the nation), the first conservation restriction with the transfer of the development rights of 156.6 acres of shore front property in South Dartmouth and Westport to Mass Audubon, and the milestone in 1976 of 10,000 acres of open space acquired. Allen installed a solar heating system as a model project at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, a year before President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels at the White House. He supervised Mass Audubon's transition from a bird watching and educational group of 4,500 members and 65 permanent staff in 1957 to the largest and most influential conservation organization in the region with a permanent staff of 145 and nearly 28,000 members by the time he left in 1980.
Mass Audubon established the Allen Morgan Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990 as a tribute to him. Mass Audubon awards this prestigious prize to "an individual who demonstrates the dedication, passion, and daring that Morgan exhibited in protecting the natural world." Similarly, SVT established the "Morgan Volunteer Award" in his memory which is awarded annually for commitment and service to SVT. The Marsh Wren on Cattail theme of the SVT logo finds further expression in that Award.
Allen engaged in extensive public service. He served on the Wayland Planning Board from 1958 to 1972, and founded the Wayland Conservation Commission in 1959, serving as its Chairman until 1972. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislative Oversight Committee on Water Pollution in 1966 and Chairman of Governor Francis W. Sargent's Committee for Reorganizing the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources from 1969 to 1971. Allen either served on or consulted with numerous environmental committees, boards, and government commissions, including SVT, The Environmental Policy Center (Washington, D.C.), the Center for Energy Policy, the New England Wildflower Preservation Society, the Wayland Conservation Commission, the Elbanobscot Foundation, Inc., the National Wildlife Federation, the national Rural Environment and Conservation Advisory Board—Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Conservation Council, and the Coastal Wetland Action Committee. He was one of three representatives of the United States at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm during 1972.
After leaving Mass Audubon, he was chosen a Fellow of Saybrook College at Yale University in 1980 turned his full-time attention to SVT as its first Executive Director. He expanded the SVT membership base, hired staff, and supervised acquisition of significant acreage of open space throughout the Sudbury River watershed while continuing lecturing, consulting, and writing until his death.
Morgan died at the Lahey Clinic in 1990 from prostate cancer a few months prior to his planned retirement in August. Robert "Bob" M. Anderson, an old friend of Allen's, spoke at Allen's memorial service. These are excerpts from what Bob said:
"Allen Morgan brought a singleness of purpose to his life. His life was a touchstone by which the rest of us measured our own commitment to protecting and improving the environment. You were either charging ahead with him, running to catch up, or scrambling to get out of his way. He was a juggernaut of steam and turbines and pistons and vinegar and moral righteousness, relentlessly pushing forward, constantly advancing his position because he believed so fervently that there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. 'What we save now,' he said, 'is all we will ever save.' *** 'The victories are only temporary,' he said, 'but the defeats are all permanent.'"
Allen Hungerford Morgan is descended from four passengers on the Mayflower - John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, Richard Warren (through three different lines of descent), and Francis Cooke: 1. A tenth generation descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, passengers on the Mayflower, 2. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower, through the "Stoddard" line, 3. An eleventh generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Samuel Churchill" line, 4. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line), and 5. A tenth generation descendant of Francis Cooke, a passenger on the Mayflower.
NOTE: The Samuel Churchill and Elizabeth Churchill lines converge with Samuel and Elizabeth from Richard Warren since they were distant cousins who married each other, both being descended from Hannah Pope and Joseph Bartlett, Samuel Churchill being descended from Hannah and Joseph's son Robert Bartlett and Elizabeth Churchill being descended from Hannah and Robert's daughter Hannah Bartlett.
The line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, Mayflower passengers, to Helen Carter is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Stephen Stoddard (son of Jane Gardner and Nathaniel Stoddard) and MARY RICHARDS JOHNSON, daughter of Edwin (or Edward or Edmund) Johnson and MARY RICHARDS JONES, daughter of Samuel Jones and MARY RICHARDS, daughter of Benjamin Richards and ABIGAIL THAYER, daughter of Ephraim Thayer and SARAH BASS, daughter of John Bass and RUTH ALDEN, daughter of JOHN ALDEN and PRISCILLA MULLINSs, Mayflower passengers.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Stoddard" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Mary Richards Johnson and STEPHEN STODDARD, son of Jane Gardner and NATHANIEL STODDARD, son of Nathaniel Stoddar and ELIZABETH SPRAGUE, daughter of Priscilla Knight and JEREMIAH SPRAGUE, son of Anthony Sprague and ELIZABETH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Sarah Cooke and ROBERT BARTLETT, son of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Samuel Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, daughter of Amaziah Churchill and ELIZABETH SYLVESTER, daughter of Joseph Sylvester and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Francis Cooke, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and SARAH COOKE, daughter of Elizabeth Lettice and JACOB COOKE, son of FRANCIS COOKE, Mayflower passenger.
Allen Hungerford Morgan received numerous honors and awards:
Bowdoin College, Honorary Doctor of Science; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Honorary Doctor of Science;
American International College, Honorary Doctor of Laws;
American Motors national Conservation Award;
The Public Relations Society of America, Outstanding Citizen Award;
The National Council of State Garden Clubs, Silver Seal Award;
The New England Wild Flower Society Award for Outstanding Service to Conservation; The Trustees of Reservations Conservation Award;
Middlesex News 1989 Man of the Year; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Masters Award;
Thoreau-Muir Wilderness Prize of the Walden Earthcare Congress; and
Center for Environmental Intern Programs, Founder's Award.
Sources for the foregoing are numerous: the personal memories of Charles Carter Morgan, Allen's first-born son and the originator of this memorial; Ludlow Griscom, Letter of Recommendation to the Director of Admissions, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, December 3, 1942; Atkins, Chester G., Tribute to Allen H. Morgan, United States House of Representatives, 1990; Sudbury Valley Trustees, Spring Newsletter, May, 1990; Obituary, The Boston Globe, May 15, 1990; Obituary, The New York Times, May 15, 1990; Anderson, Robert President of Sudbury Valley Trustees, "In Memory of Allen Morgan," Eulogy delivered at the First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, May 17, 1990, (Insert in the Sudbury Valley Trustees Spring Newsletter, May, 1990); Adams, Thomas Boylston "The man who made Sudbury Valley his monument," The Boston Globe, May 26, 1990; McAdow, Ron "Recalling a conversation with Allen Morgan," Wayland Town Crier, June 7, 1990; Weinberg, Judith "In Person Allen H. Morgan, Executive Director, Sudbury Valley Trustees," MetroWest, Massachusetts News Weekly, June 9, 1989; and Biographical Sketch, The Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Allen H. Morgan Papers, 1923-1990.
Allen Hungerford Morgan (August 12, 1925 – May 13, 1990) of Wayland, Massachusetts was a 2d Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, a well-known ornithologist, an aggressive advocate for open space and a healthy environment, an excellent tennis player, an Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society bringing it to the forefront of the nascent environmental movement, the primary Founder and first Executive Director of Sudbury Valley Trustees (SVT), and a recipient of the Environmental Master Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the first time the EPA made the Award.
"Alan is a born and gifted field naturalist, is one of the best and most active of the younger observers of birds in the State of Massachusetts and furnishes monthly observations of interest for the Bird Bulletin of the New England Museum of Natural History in Boston and for my own Season Reports on New England Bird life in the National Audubon Magazine." (Griscom, 1942).
"He was a conservationist long before it was fashionable, and an inspiring public speaker who could galvanize his audience into action. His untiring spirit, unwavering beliefs, and powers of persuasion brought him success time and time again as he rescued thousands of acres of open space from the threat of development." (Atkins, 1990) Allen was a protégé of the famous ornithologist Ludlow Griscom.
Allen compiled a life list exceeding 600 different birds. He saw a Black-backed Gull, the first such sighting recorded in the Sudbury Valley. He and two friends saw a Cattle Egret during April 1952, the first time a Cattle Egret had been recorded in North America. He kept bird journals to record the date, location, time, kind, and characteristics of birds that he saw, the first entry of which is dated February 18, 1936 and the last of which is dated in the late 1960s. Allen attended Wayland, Massachusetts public schools, Mount Prospect School for Boys in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts where he played football.
His interest in ornithology arose at age 9 when David Garrison, a teacher at Mount Prospect and friend of Ludlow Griscom, came to class and spoke about having seen an Orange-crowned Warbler at Totten's Pond behind the school (a rare event in Eastern Massachusetts). Allen's first public lecture on birds and conservation was made to the Wayland Garden Club at age 13. Having ridden the eighteen miles from Wayland to Cambridge on his bicycle to attend meetings of the Harvard Ornithological Club, he was admitted as a member at age 14 in 1939, the first non-Harvard student to be so honored.
Garrison introduced Allen to the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Charles Russell "Russ" Mason. Allen had a job cleaning and cataloging a collection of bird skins with the curator of the Boston Society of Natural History during the summer of 1940. He became a member of Mass Audubon at age 16 in 1941. That relationship gave him access to a bird-song record and color slides that he used that year for another lecture to the Wayland Garden Club.
He left high school halfway through his senior year at Weston High School in 1943 to matriculate at Bowdoin College. He joined the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve and was employed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work at the Maine coast on a gull control project. The Marine Corps called him up during July 1943 and sent him to Dartmouth College for officer training. He served in the Marine Corps from 1944 through 1946, first in North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, then to California where he was stationed to be in the first wave of Marines to land on the Japanese mainland, a mission precluded by the atom bombs.
He graduated from Bowdoin in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, the year in which the first of his three children Charles Carter Morgan (named after Allen's brother who died young in 1938 of a ruptured appendix) was born. He followed in the footsteps of his father, taking a job at Aetna Casualty & Surety Company in Hartford, Connecticut as an insurance underwriter. He left Aetna in 1950 to join his father, Charles Thompson Morgan (also a life insurance professional) at 31 Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Later that year the Marine Corps recalled him because of the Korean War. He returned to his father's life insurance practice in 1951 after resigning his commission with the Marine Corps.
He learned from friends that Richard "Dick" Borden, the famous wildlife film-maker, had captured a Cattle Egret on film taken merely five months previously. Allen met with Dick, viewed the film and confirmed the recording. After writing scripts for several of Dick's films, Allen began shooting his own 16 millimeter films and also sold footage to the Disney Company.
Allen presented his "Conservation is Common Sense" lecture extensively, making more than 100 presentations in some years. Allen began campaigning in 1953 to preserve "open space" for active and passive recreation as well as habitats for wildlife. That year he gathered six friends (B. Allen Benjamin, Dr. George K. Lewis, Henry Parker, Willis B. Ryder, Richard Stackpole, and Roger P. Stokey) at his home "Windyhill" in Wayland. He led them in founding Sudbury Valley Trustees, Inc. (SVT), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to conserve land and protect wildlife habitat in the Concord, Assabet, and Sudbury river watersheds of Eastern Massachusetts. The Marsh Wren on Cattail logo of SVT, the preparation of which he supervised, is part of his enduring legacy. Dick Borden, the new Executive Director of Mass Audubon, asked Allen to join its Board of Directors in 1956. Also in 1956, Allen cleared the woods from the marsh behind his home at "Windyhill" in Wayland, Massachusetts, hired a drag line to dig out the swamp and build a dam with a spillway to create a pond stocked with trout for wildlife habitat.
Less than a year later in November, 1957, Allen was appointed Audubon's fifth Executive Vice President. Under Allen's supervision, Mass Audubon established its first scientific staff, expanded its educational programs and nature centers, and established numerous wildlife sanctuaries. He traveled extensively on behalf of Mass Audubon and lobbied successfully for conservation legislation at both the state and federal levels. He tackled causes like pesticide regulation while never losing sight of Audubon's origins in bird conservation.
Major accomplishments during his tenure (1959-1980) included passage of Massachusetts wetlands protection legislation in the 1960s and 1970s (the first state wetlands laws in the nation), the first conservation restriction with the transfer of the development rights of 156.6 acres of shore front property in South Dartmouth and Westport to Mass Audubon, and the milestone in 1976 of 10,000 acres of open space acquired. Allen installed a solar heating system as a model project at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, a year before President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels at the White House. He supervised Mass Audubon's transition from a bird watching and educational group of 4,500 members and 65 permanent staff in 1957 to the largest and most influential conservation organization in the region with a permanent staff of 145 and nearly 28,000 members by the time he left in 1980.
Mass Audubon established the Allen Morgan Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990 as a tribute to him. Mass Audubon awards this prestigious prize to "an individual who demonstrates the dedication, passion, and daring that Morgan exhibited in protecting the natural world." Similarly, SVT established the "Morgan Volunteer Award" in his memory which is awarded annually for commitment and service to SVT. The Marsh Wren on Cattail theme of the SVT logo finds further expression in that Award.
Allen engaged in extensive public service. He served on the Wayland Planning Board from 1958 to 1972, and founded the Wayland Conservation Commission in 1959, serving as its Chairman until 1972. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislative Oversight Committee on Water Pollution in 1966 and Chairman of Governor Francis W. Sargent's Committee for Reorganizing the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources from 1969 to 1971. Allen either served on or consulted with numerous environmental committees, boards, and government commissions, including SVT, The Environmental Policy Center (Washington, D.C.), the Center for Energy Policy, the New England Wildflower Preservation Society, the Wayland Conservation Commission, the Elbanobscot Foundation, Inc., the National Wildlife Federation, the national Rural Environment and Conservation Advisory Board—Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Conservation Council, and the Coastal Wetland Action Committee. He was one of three representatives of the United States at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm during 1972.
After leaving Mass Audubon, he was chosen a Fellow of Saybrook College at Yale University in 1980 turned his full-time attention to SVT as its first Executive Director. He expanded the SVT membership base, hired staff, and supervised acquisition of significant acreage of open space throughout the Sudbury River watershed while continuing lecturing, consulting, and writing until his death.
Morgan died at the Lahey Clinic in 1990 from prostate cancer a few months prior to his planned retirement in August. Robert "Bob" M. Anderson, an old friend of Allen's, spoke at Allen's memorial service. These are excerpts from what Bob said:
"Allen Morgan brought a singleness of purpose to his life. His life was a touchstone by which the rest of us measured our own commitment to protecting and improving the environment. You were either charging ahead with him, running to catch up, or scrambling to get out of his way. He was a juggernaut of steam and turbines and pistons and vinegar and moral righteousness, relentlessly pushing forward, constantly advancing his position because he believed so fervently that there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. 'What we save now,' he said, 'is all we will ever save.' *** 'The victories are only temporary,' he said, 'but the defeats are all permanent.'"
Allen Hungerford Morgan is descended from four passengers on the Mayflower - John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, Richard Warren (through three different lines of descent), and Francis Cooke: 1. A tenth generation descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, passengers on the Mayflower, 2. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower, through the "Stoddard" line, 3. An eleventh generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Samuel Churchill" line, 4. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line), and 5. A tenth generation descendant of Francis Cooke, a passenger on the Mayflower.
NOTE: The Samuel Churchill and Elizabeth Churchill lines converge with Samuel and Elizabeth from Richard Warren since they were distant cousins who married each other, both being descended from Hannah Pope and Joseph Bartlett, Samuel Churchill being descended from Hannah and Joseph's son Robert Bartlett and Elizabeth Churchill being descended from Hannah and Robert's daughter Hannah Bartlett.
The line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, Mayflower passengers, to Helen Carter is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Stephen Stoddard (son of Jane Gardner and Nathaniel Stoddard) and MARY RICHARDS JOHNSON, daughter of Edwin (or Edward or Edmund) Johnson and MARY RICHARDS JONES, daughter of Samuel Jones and MARY RICHARDS, daughter of Benjamin Richards and ABIGAIL THAYER, daughter of Ephraim Thayer and SARAH BASS, daughter of John Bass and RUTH ALDEN, daughter of JOHN ALDEN and PRISCILLA MULLINSs, Mayflower passengers.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Stoddard" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Mary Richards Johnson and STEPHEN STODDARD, son of Jane Gardner and NATHANIEL STODDARD, son of Nathaniel Stoddar and ELIZABETH SPRAGUE, daughter of Priscilla Knight and JEREMIAH SPRAGUE, son of Anthony Sprague and ELIZABETH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Sarah Cooke and ROBERT BARTLETT, son of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Samuel Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, daughter of Amaziah Churchill and ELIZABETH SYLVESTER, daughter of Joseph Sylvester and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Francis Cooke, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and SARAH COOKE, daughter of Elizabeth Lettice and JACOB COOKE, son of FRANCIS COOKE, Mayflower passenger.
Allen Hungerford Morgan received numerous honors and awards:
Bowdoin College, Honorary Doctor of Science; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Honorary Doctor of Science;
American International College, Honorary Doctor of Laws;
American Motors national Conservation Award;
The Public Relations Society of America, Outstanding Citizen Award;
The National Council of State Garden Clubs, Silver Seal Award;
The New England Wild Flower Society Award for Outstanding Service to Conservation; The Trustees of Reservations Conservation Award;
Middlesex News 1989 Man of the Year; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Masters Award;
Thoreau-Muir Wilderness Prize of the Walden Earthcare Congress; and
Center for Environmental Intern Programs, Founder's Award.
Sources for the foregoing are numerous: the personal memories of Charles Carter Morgan, Allen's first-born son and the originator of this memorial; Ludlow Griscom, Letter of Recommendation to the Director of Admissions, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, December 3, 1942; Atkins, Chester G., Tribute to Allen H. Morgan, United States House of Representatives, 1990; Sudbury Valley Trustees, Spring Newsletter, May, 1990; Obituary, The Boston Globe, May 15, 1990; Obituary, The New York Times, May 15, 1990; Anderson, Robert President of Sudbury Valley Trustees, "In Memory of Allen Morgan," Eulogy delivered at the First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, May 17, 1990, (Insert in the Sudbury Valley Trustees Spring Newsletter, May, 1990); Adams, Thomas Boylston "The man who made Sudbury Valley his monument," The Boston Globe, May 26, 1990; McAdow, Ron "Recalling a conversation with Allen Morgan," Wayland Town Crier, June 7, 1990; Weinberg, Judith "In Person Allen H. Morgan, Executive Director, Sudbury Valley Trustees," MetroWest, Massachusetts News Weekly, June 9, 1989; and Biographical Sketch, The Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Allen H. Morgan Papers, 1923-1990.
"Alan is a born and gifted field naturalist, is one of the best and most active of the younger observers of birds in the State of Massachusetts and furnishes monthly observations of interest for the Bird Bulletin of the New England Museum of Natural History in Boston and for my own Season Reports on New England Bird life in the National Audubon Magazine." (Griscom, 1942).
"He was a conservationist long before it was fashionable, and an inspiring public speaker who could galvanize his audience into action. His untiring spirit, unwavering beliefs, and powers of persuasion brought him success time and time again as he rescued thousands of acres of open space from the threat of development." (Atkins, 1990) Allen was a protégé of the famous ornithologist Ludlow Griscom.
Allen compiled a life list exceeding 600 different birds. He saw a Black-backed Gull, the first such sighting recorded in the Sudbury Valley. He and two friends saw a Cattle Egret during April 1952, the first time a Cattle Egret had been recorded in North America. He kept bird journals to record the date, location, time, kind, and characteristics of birds that he saw, the first entry of which is dated February 18, 1936 and the last of which is dated in the late 1960s. Allen attended Wayland, Massachusetts public schools, Mount Prospect School for Boys in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Weston High School in Weston, Massachusetts where he played football.
His interest in ornithology arose at age 9 when David Garrison, a teacher at Mount Prospect and friend of Ludlow Griscom, came to class and spoke about having seen an Orange-crowned Warbler at Totten's Pond behind the school (a rare event in Eastern Massachusetts). Allen's first public lecture on birds and conservation was made to the Wayland Garden Club at age 13. Having ridden the eighteen miles from Wayland to Cambridge on his bicycle to attend meetings of the Harvard Ornithological Club, he was admitted as a member at age 14 in 1939, the first non-Harvard student to be so honored.
Garrison introduced Allen to the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Audubon Society Charles Russell "Russ" Mason. Allen had a job cleaning and cataloging a collection of bird skins with the curator of the Boston Society of Natural History during the summer of 1940. He became a member of Mass Audubon at age 16 in 1941. That relationship gave him access to a bird-song record and color slides that he used that year for another lecture to the Wayland Garden Club.
He left high school halfway through his senior year at Weston High School in 1943 to matriculate at Bowdoin College. He joined the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve and was employed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work at the Maine coast on a gull control project. The Marine Corps called him up during July 1943 and sent him to Dartmouth College for officer training. He served in the Marine Corps from 1944 through 1946, first in North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, then to California where he was stationed to be in the first wave of Marines to land on the Japanese mainland, a mission precluded by the atom bombs.
He graduated from Bowdoin in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology, the year in which the first of his three children Charles Carter Morgan (named after Allen's brother who died young in 1938 of a ruptured appendix) was born. He followed in the footsteps of his father, taking a job at Aetna Casualty & Surety Company in Hartford, Connecticut as an insurance underwriter. He left Aetna in 1950 to join his father, Charles Thompson Morgan (also a life insurance professional) at 31 Milk Street in Boston, Massachusetts. Later that year the Marine Corps recalled him because of the Korean War. He returned to his father's life insurance practice in 1951 after resigning his commission with the Marine Corps.
He learned from friends that Richard "Dick" Borden, the famous wildlife film-maker, had captured a Cattle Egret on film taken merely five months previously. Allen met with Dick, viewed the film and confirmed the recording. After writing scripts for several of Dick's films, Allen began shooting his own 16 millimeter films and also sold footage to the Disney Company.
Allen presented his "Conservation is Common Sense" lecture extensively, making more than 100 presentations in some years. Allen began campaigning in 1953 to preserve "open space" for active and passive recreation as well as habitats for wildlife. That year he gathered six friends (B. Allen Benjamin, Dr. George K. Lewis, Henry Parker, Willis B. Ryder, Richard Stackpole, and Roger P. Stokey) at his home "Windyhill" in Wayland. He led them in founding Sudbury Valley Trustees, Inc. (SVT), a not-for-profit organization with the mission to conserve land and protect wildlife habitat in the Concord, Assabet, and Sudbury river watersheds of Eastern Massachusetts. The Marsh Wren on Cattail logo of SVT, the preparation of which he supervised, is part of his enduring legacy. Dick Borden, the new Executive Director of Mass Audubon, asked Allen to join its Board of Directors in 1956. Also in 1956, Allen cleared the woods from the marsh behind his home at "Windyhill" in Wayland, Massachusetts, hired a drag line to dig out the swamp and build a dam with a spillway to create a pond stocked with trout for wildlife habitat.
Less than a year later in November, 1957, Allen was appointed Audubon's fifth Executive Vice President. Under Allen's supervision, Mass Audubon established its first scientific staff, expanded its educational programs and nature centers, and established numerous wildlife sanctuaries. He traveled extensively on behalf of Mass Audubon and lobbied successfully for conservation legislation at both the state and federal levels. He tackled causes like pesticide regulation while never losing sight of Audubon's origins in bird conservation.
Major accomplishments during his tenure (1959-1980) included passage of Massachusetts wetlands protection legislation in the 1960s and 1970s (the first state wetlands laws in the nation), the first conservation restriction with the transfer of the development rights of 156.6 acres of shore front property in South Dartmouth and Westport to Mass Audubon, and the milestone in 1976 of 10,000 acres of open space acquired. Allen installed a solar heating system as a model project at Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, a year before President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels at the White House. He supervised Mass Audubon's transition from a bird watching and educational group of 4,500 members and 65 permanent staff in 1957 to the largest and most influential conservation organization in the region with a permanent staff of 145 and nearly 28,000 members by the time he left in 1980.
Mass Audubon established the Allen Morgan Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990 as a tribute to him. Mass Audubon awards this prestigious prize to "an individual who demonstrates the dedication, passion, and daring that Morgan exhibited in protecting the natural world." Similarly, SVT established the "Morgan Volunteer Award" in his memory which is awarded annually for commitment and service to SVT. The Marsh Wren on Cattail theme of the SVT logo finds further expression in that Award.
Allen engaged in extensive public service. He served on the Wayland Planning Board from 1958 to 1972, and founded the Wayland Conservation Commission in 1959, serving as its Chairman until 1972. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislative Oversight Committee on Water Pollution in 1966 and Chairman of Governor Francis W. Sargent's Committee for Reorganizing the Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources from 1969 to 1971. Allen either served on or consulted with numerous environmental committees, boards, and government commissions, including SVT, The Environmental Policy Center (Washington, D.C.), the Center for Energy Policy, the New England Wildflower Preservation Society, the Wayland Conservation Commission, the Elbanobscot Foundation, Inc., the National Wildlife Federation, the national Rural Environment and Conservation Advisory Board—Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Conservation Council, and the Coastal Wetland Action Committee. He was one of three representatives of the United States at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm during 1972.
After leaving Mass Audubon, he was chosen a Fellow of Saybrook College at Yale University in 1980 turned his full-time attention to SVT as its first Executive Director. He expanded the SVT membership base, hired staff, and supervised acquisition of significant acreage of open space throughout the Sudbury River watershed while continuing lecturing, consulting, and writing until his death.
Morgan died at the Lahey Clinic in 1990 from prostate cancer a few months prior to his planned retirement in August. Robert "Bob" M. Anderson, an old friend of Allen's, spoke at Allen's memorial service. These are excerpts from what Bob said:
"Allen Morgan brought a singleness of purpose to his life. His life was a touchstone by which the rest of us measured our own commitment to protecting and improving the environment. You were either charging ahead with him, running to catch up, or scrambling to get out of his way. He was a juggernaut of steam and turbines and pistons and vinegar and moral righteousness, relentlessly pushing forward, constantly advancing his position because he believed so fervently that there was so much to do and so little time in which to do it. 'What we save now,' he said, 'is all we will ever save.' *** 'The victories are only temporary,' he said, 'but the defeats are all permanent.'"
Allen Hungerford Morgan is descended from four passengers on the Mayflower - John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, Richard Warren (through three different lines of descent), and Francis Cooke: 1. A tenth generation descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, passengers on the Mayflower, 2. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren, a passenger on the Mayflower, through the "Stoddard" line, 3. An eleventh generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Samuel Churchill" line, 4. A tenth generation descendant of Richard Warren through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line), and 5. A tenth generation descendant of Francis Cooke, a passenger on the Mayflower.
NOTE: The Samuel Churchill and Elizabeth Churchill lines converge with Samuel and Elizabeth from Richard Warren since they were distant cousins who married each other, both being descended from Hannah Pope and Joseph Bartlett, Samuel Churchill being descended from Hannah and Joseph's son Robert Bartlett and Elizabeth Churchill being descended from Hannah and Robert's daughter Hannah Bartlett.
The line of descent from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, Mayflower passengers, to Helen Carter is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Stephen Stoddard (son of Jane Gardner and Nathaniel Stoddard) and MARY RICHARDS JOHNSON, daughter of Edwin (or Edward or Edmund) Johnson and MARY RICHARDS JONES, daughter of Samuel Jones and MARY RICHARDS, daughter of Benjamin Richards and ABIGAIL THAYER, daughter of Ephraim Thayer and SARAH BASS, daughter of John Bass and RUTH ALDEN, daughter of JOHN ALDEN and PRISCILLA MULLINSs, Mayflower passengers.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Stoddard" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of George Tilton Carter (a descendant of Richard Warren through the "Churchill" line) and ELIZABETH "LIZZIE" BERTHA MATTHEWS, daughter of John V. Matthews and ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of ABIGAIL "ABBY" RICHARDS STODDARD, daughter of Mary Richards Johnson and STEPHEN STODDARD, son of Jane Gardner and NATHANIEL STODDARD, son of Nathaniel Stoddar and ELIZABETH SPRAGUE, daughter of Priscilla Knight and JEREMIAH SPRAGUE, son of Anthony Sprague and ELIZABETH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Sarah Cooke and ROBERT BARTLETT, son of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Richard Warren, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Elizabeth Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER and, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Samuel Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and ELIZABETH CHURCHILL, daughter of Amaziah Churchill and ELIZABETH SYLVESTER, daughter of Joseph Sylvester and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Hannah Pope and JOSEPH BARTLETT, son of Robert Bartlett and MARY WARREN, daughter of RICHARD WARREN, Mayflower passenger.
The line of descent from Francis Cooke, Mayflower passenger, to Allen Hungerford Morgan through the "Samuel Churchill" line is as follows: ALLEN HUNGERFORD MORGAN, son of Charles Thompson Morgan and HELEN CARTER, daughter of Elizabeth Lizzie Matthews and GEORGE TILTON CARTER, son of Deacon John Tilton Carter and LUCY RHODES COLLINS, daughter of Samuel Avery Collins and ESTHER CHURCHILL, daughter of Elizabeth Churchill (another descendant of Richard Warren) and SAMUEL CHURCHILL, son of Patience Harlow and JOSIAH CHURCHILL, son of Eliezer Churchill and HANNAH BARTLETT, daughter of Robert Bartlett and SARAH COOKE, daughter of Elizabeth Lettice and JACOB COOKE, son of FRANCIS COOKE, Mayflower passenger.
Allen Hungerford Morgan received numerous honors and awards:
Bowdoin College, Honorary Doctor of Science; University of Massachusetts Amherst, Honorary Doctor of Science;
American International College, Honorary Doctor of Laws;
American Motors national Conservation Award;
The Public Relations Society of America, Outstanding Citizen Award;
The National Council of State Garden Clubs, Silver Seal Award;
The New England Wild Flower Society Award for Outstanding Service to Conservation; The Trustees of Reservations Conservation Award;
Middlesex News 1989 Man of the Year; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Masters Award;
Thoreau-Muir Wilderness Prize of the Walden Earthcare Congress; and
Center for Environmental Intern Programs, Founder's Award.
Sources for the foregoing are numerous: the personal memories of Charles Carter Morgan, Allen's first-born son and the originator of this memorial; Ludlow Griscom, Letter of Recommendation to the Director of Admissions, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, December 3, 1942; Atkins, Chester G., Tribute to Allen H. Morgan, United States House of Representatives, 1990; Sudbury Valley Trustees, Spring Newsletter, May, 1990; Obituary, The Boston Globe, May 15, 1990; Obituary, The New York Times, May 15, 1990; Anderson, Robert President of Sudbury Valley Trustees, "In Memory of Allen Morgan," Eulogy delivered at the First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, May 17, 1990, (Insert in the Sudbury Valley Trustees Spring Newsletter, May, 1990); Adams, Thomas Boylston "The man who made Sudbury Valley his monument," The Boston Globe, May 26, 1990; McAdow, Ron "Recalling a conversation with Allen Morgan," Wayland Town Crier, June 7, 1990; Weinberg, Judith "In Person Allen H. Morgan, Executive Director, Sudbury Valley Trustees," MetroWest, Massachusetts News Weekly, June 9, 1989; and Biographical Sketch, The Massachusetts Historical Society Library, Allen H. Morgan Papers, 1923-1990.
