Folio album ca. 30,4x22,5 cm (12 x 8 ¾ in). 23 paper album leaves (six blank). With 71 original gelatin silver photographs (including six loose) from ca. 12,8x17,7 cm (5x7 in) to ca. 4,7x6,8 cm. Most photos with English captions on the mounts, in negatives, or on verso; with ten real photo postcards ca. 8,6x13,8 cm (3 ¼ x 5 ½ in), most by John E. Thwaites, photographer of Alaska; with ca. ten pieces of printed ephemera, including tickets and dinner saloon checks. Period black cloth album fastened with a string; gilt-lettered title “Book of Clippings” on the front cover. Edges worn, about ten photos partially detached, but otherwise a very good album with strong, interesting photos.

Historically interesting collection of original photographs and printed postcards taken and collected by Jay C. Morse (ca. 1873–1954), a family member of telegraph inventor Samuel Morse (ca. 1791-1872, mostly during a voyage from Seattle to Alaska in the summer of 1929. Jay and his wife, Nellie W. Morse (ca. 1873), departed Seattle aboard the SS Queen on August 22 for a five-day journey, stopping at Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau, and Skagway.

Jay C. Morse was a long-time Oregon telegraph operator and grandnephew of Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and Morse code. He was born in LaMotte, Iowa, and came to Portland in 1911. Beginning his career as a telegraph operator at sixteen, Morse was employed by the Oregon Washington Railroad and Navigation Company and later by the Union Pacific Railroad. He was also a member of the Morse Telegraph Club and Albert Pike Masonic Lodge No. 162.

The album contains eighty-one well-preserved photographs and real photo postcards with most images documenting the Alaska voyage. About ten excellent photos of Ketchikan show general views of the waterfront, Ketchikan Creek, and a cityscape with clearly visible signs “US Cable Landing” and “Northland Transportation Company.” Seven photographs from Wrangell capture the waterfront (including the steamer Yukon), Indigenous girls walking along the harbor, and a classical Raven Totem. Especially interesting are two early street views with taxis parked along the sidewalks and signs for “Alaska Café” and “Walter C. Waters (authority on antiquities).” Five photographs from Petersburg focus on harbor scenes, with fishing boats and steamers alongside buildings lining the waterfront. Interesting scenes from Juneau include landscapes (Auk Lake, Mendenhall Glacier), the harbor, and a street view with visible “Kodaks” and “Studio Portraits” advertisements. The collection also contains about eight photographs taken in Skagway, depicting the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, Skagway Canyon, and the International Boundary sign. Especially important is a view along Broadway toward the mountains, with railway tracks in the foreground and a swastika symbol in the background (used prior to its appropriation by the Nazi Party as a sign of hospitality among Indigenous peoples of the Americas). The Alaska series concludes with several photographs from Sitka, showing Lovers Lane, Mount Verstovia, and the waterfront.

The album also includes about twenty original photographs apparently taken and compiled during another journey from Field, British Columbia, to Toronto, Ontario. Identified views include the Mount Stephen Hotel in Field, a train locomotive, the SS Canada of the Canada Steamship Lines, and Niagara Falls.

The collection is supplemented with ca. ten pieces of printed ephemera, including a ticket for the SS Queen (Skagway–Seattle), a Pacific Steamship Company dining saloon check, a Canadian Pacific Railway ticket (Field–Toronto), a Canada Steamship Lines coupon for an excursion across Lake Ontario, and an International Railway Company pedestrian bridge ticket for crossing the U.S.–Canada border at Niagara.

Overall, historically interesting collection of original gelatin silver photographs and printed postcards mostly taken and collected during a voyage from Seattle to Alaska, in the summer of 1929.