Decades After their Deaths, Thomas Hunt Morgan and Lilian Vaughan Morgan are Laid to Rest in Woods Hole

It’s not often that a burial service is held for a couple that died more than 70 years ago. But last month, Thomas Hunt Morgan and Lilian Vaughan Morgan were finally laid to rest at Woods Hole Village Cemetery, after a cross-country trip that the couple had made many times in life.

Their descendants had always thought that Thomas -- 1933 Nobel laureate and longtime investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, and Lilian, also an MBL investigator and co-founder of the nearby Children’s School of Science  -– had been buried near Pasadena, Calif., since Thomas was a professor and Lilian a researcher at Caltech before their deaths.

But when Beth Trencheny, the couple’s great-granddaughter, and her husband Bob decided to look for the Morgans’ grave last fall, they were astonished to find it didn’t exist. After some sleuthing, they tracked down the couple’s cremains in perpetual storage and marked “unclaimed” at  Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, Calif.

“We decided to bring them home,” said Beth. And home to their family means Woods Hole.

Thomas and Lilian’s burial on a sunny, late-August morning was led by the Rev. Peter Feltman-Mahan of Church of the Messiah, Woods Hole, with Morgan family members from around the country in attendance. Some stayed in the Buzzards Bay Avenue property that Thomas and Lilian built in 1906, and to which their descendants still flock every summer.

Also attending were distinguished members of the Woods Hole community, just as the Morgans were during the 55 summers that one or both spent in the village (1890-1945).

A Lasting Legacy to Science

At the burial, MBL Director Nipam Patel offered words of tribute to Thomas’s tremendous and lasting legacy to science, noting that Lilian was a great scientist, as well.

“Most people know Thomas for his work that won the Nobel Prize, which is his pioneering work on Drosophila (fruit fly) genetics,” Patel said. “Morgan proved that genes were arrayed on chromosomes, and that is a foundation on which so much of modern biology is built.”

Patel himself earned his Ph.D. working in part on Drosophila neurogenetics, building on Morgan’s foundations. “I still keep fruit flies in my lab,” he said.

“But the other special aspect, for the MBL, is Thomas had an incredibly broad interest in biology,” Patel continued. “He loved working on all sorts of organisms, and he was a talented embryologist.”

Morgan first came to the MBL in 1890 as a Ph.D. student to study sea spiders, “and as he continued to come back each summer when he was a faculty member at Bryn Mawr, then at Columbia and lastly at Caltech, he continued to follow his passion in working with many organisms,” Patel said. “If you look in the MBLWHOI Library, for example, you’ll find 11 manuscripts he wrote on regeneration in planaria (flatworms). His legacy is well beyond what he earned a Nobel Prize for.”

“Morgan’s imprint here is very, very strong,” Patel continued. “Even this summer, I was helping students collect sea spiders for work in the Embryology course. And following on Morgan’s passion, I also work on many different organisms. It’s amazing to see that legacy keep going on and on. Morgan contributed to scientific discoveries in so many ways, and he continues to be an inspiration to the MBL.”

“It’s an incredible honor for Woods Hole, as a place of science, to know that Thomas and Lilian are laid to rest here,” Patel said.

A Pioneer for Women in Science

Christine Field, a biologist at Harvard Medical School and MBL and vice president of the board/chair of academic planning at Children’s School of Science (CSS), then paid tribute to Lilian’s pioneering role as a scientist and educator.

“Lilian opened the door to women in science and was a role model to many of us,” Field said.

Beginning in her college years, Lilian was an 91�鶹���� summer investigator (1891-1906) at a time when very few women had the opportunity to join a research lab. “Lilian did studies in regeneration, in embryology, and she worked with multiple species,” Field said, and remarkably, she published six research papers during this time on which she was the first author.

Lilian met Thomas at the MBL. After they married in 1904, Lilian put her research aside to raise their four children and manage the household. But after the children were grown, she returned to the lab, working in the nascent field of Drosophila genetics, making significant discoveries, and publishing 15 more papers.

“This is incredible,” Field said. “I know very many women who started off in science, had children, and didn’t come back. But she came back.”

In 1913, during her pause from the lab, Lilian joined with several wives of 91�鶹���� scientists to start the Summer School Club, which offered singing, dancing, and science. “By the second year, Lilian was the educational chairperson, and she built a science school that year,” Field said. “Lilian developed classes that emphasized going out and studying nature, which is still the philosophy of the school today.”

Renamed the Children’s School of Science in 1923, it currently offers 25 different courses (some started by Lilian) and enrolls about 400 students each summer. “Just think about how many students have been touched by Lilian’s legacy,” Field said. She relayed a message from Kate Schafer, the school’s director: “There is great gratitude in the CSS community to Lilian and her family for the tremendous gift in creating this school.”

A Family Reunited

Some of the Morgan family members then offered remembrances, including attending the Children’s School of Science themselves. Some talked about their parents (Thomas and Llian’s grandchildren) taking “the great migration” from Pasadena to Woods Hole each summer, “with trunks and books and bottles of fruit flies, which most of the family members were required to carry,” said great-granddaughter Parry Mead Murray.

“Could there be no more fitting final resting place for Thomas and Lilian than Woods Hole, the community in which they worked and were the happiest?” Murray said.

“Woods Hole is where the Morgan family has touched, all these years,” Beth Trencheny said. “We love the MBL and the entire scientific community here. We hope that future generations will come to realize that science is important, what you do matters, and that your legacy will live on with our family, as well as your scientific achievements. Thank you for welcoming Thomas and Lilian home.”

And finally, Thomas and Lilian’s ashes were returned to the earth. “As we lay Thomas and Lilian to rest, help us to carry forward the spirit of courage, curiosity and care,” said Rev. Feltman-Mahan. “May we honor them, not only in memory, but in the way we live and love and seek truth.”