MARCUS MORTON

1893-1989

Marcus Morton was born on August 13,1893 in Newton Massachusetts, the third in the family to bear that name, the first being a distinguished governor of the Commonwealth. He attended Groton School and then Yale College, from which he graduated in 1916. He then entered the Harvard Law School but left in 1917 to serve in the U.S. Army in World War I. He left the service as a captain and retured to the study of law, receiving his LLD from Harvard in 1921. He immediately entered the practice of law with the firm of Herrick, Smith, Donald and Farley. He left to become Assistant District Attorney for two years, and at the end of that service, in 1927 he founded his own firm of Hale, Sanderson, Byrne and Morton, from which he retired in 1970.

In 1924, he married Margaret M. Miner and they had three children, Marian, Lea and Margaret. He took an active part in Cambridge affairs, serving on that city’s Red Feather Agency, Recreation Commission, Civic Unity Commission and Council for Aging. He also served on the City Council from 1942 to 1945 and from 1954 to 1956.

Marcus was an avid traveler as well as a climber, and he visited much of Europe as well as climbing in this country and in Canada. Although he was never a continuously active mountaineer, he ascended many peaks in the Lake Louise and Lake O’Hara areas of the Canadian Rockies. He also participated in the first ascent of Mount French in the British Military Group in 1921. He always took a keen interest in the mountaineering activities of his friends and was always ready to use his legal expertise in solving the problems of the organizations to which he belonged. He was a most interesting person and we all regret his passing.

Kenneth A. Henderson