Charles C. Morrison, M.D., a prominent and popular physician of Bar Harbor, Hancock County, son of John T. and Lucy (Carr) Morrison, was born July 12, 1856, at Mariaville, Maine. The paternal grandfather, Joseph Morrison, about a century ago removed from Canaan, Somerset County, to Ellsworth. In 1810 he took up a tract of unbroken land in Mariaville, and with the endurance and perseverance characteristic of the early pioneers reclaimed a farm from the wilderness, and there spent the remainder of his long life of eighty-one years. The Doctor’s maternal grandfather, Joseph Carr, was likewise one of the pioneers of Mariaville, to which he removed from York County in 1810 or soon after. He, too, lived to a ripe old age, and at his death left a large family of children.
Charles C. Morrison won distinction as a scholar while a pupil in the district school, which he attended during the fall terms only, his services being needed on the home farm in seed-time and harvest and in the lumber woods during the winter. In his early youth he became intimately acquainted with every branch of agricultural industry. At the lumber camps he was entrusted with the supervision of driving the logs down the river, having charge of the men and horses employed. Desirous, however, of further research in the world of knowledge, he earned sufficient money by teaching to pay his way through the Maine Central Institute at Pittsfield. At the age of twenty-four he began to read medicine with Dr. Haines, of Ellsworth. A short time later he entered the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, from which he was graduated with honors, March 13, 1883. A few weeks later, on May 2, he located at Bar Harbor, where he introduced the practice of homeopathy. Successful from the first, his services were soon sought by the leading families on the island; and through the influence of Dr. William Todd Helmuth, a celebrated homeopathist of New York, he secured a large proportion of the patronage of the summer residents.
In 1886 and 1887, when the real estate values in Bar Harbor became inflated, the Doctor, tempted by a few profitable transactions, made heavy purchases of land, giving notes and mortgages as securities. To his surprise and sorrow the land boom broke in 1888, and left him worth less than nothing by ten thousand dollars. With true New England pluck, however, he determined that no person should lose through his folly. To this end he thereafter worked every day in the year, denying himself vacations and recreations of all kinds, and in a comparatively few years he had paid every cent of his indebtedness. In that period he also disposed of some of his property to good advantage, so that he can now pursue the even tenor of his way without embarrassment, assured of a good income independent of his profession.
The Doctor is a stanch Republican in politics. When but twenty-one years old he was chosen Selectman and Supervisor of Schools in Mariaville, positions to which he was reelected each year that he remained there. Prominent in the Masonic fraternity, he is a Royal Arch Mason of Mount Kebo Chapter, and a Knight Templar of St. John’s Commandery in Bangor. He is also an Odd Fellow, a Knight of Pythias, a member of the Patriotic Sons of America and of the Independent Order of Foresters. Outside the secret organizations he belongs to the Village Improvement Association of Bar Harbor and the Maine Homeopathic Society. On October 20, 1890, he married Miss Ida Conners, of Bar Harbor, in the presence of six hundred of their friends at the St. Sauveur Hotel. The Doctor and Mrs. Morrison have three children; namely, Charles C. Morrison, Jr., Mildred C., and John Moulton. They but recently returned from an extended trip through Europe, and are now pleasantly anticipating a visit to Egypt and the Holy Land in the near future.
Source: Biographical review: containing life sketches of leading citizens of Somerset, Piscataquis, Hancock, Washington, and Aroostook counties, Maine. Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1898.