The son of noted geographer Jedidiah Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and then Yale. At college, he determined to pursue an artistic profession, and, as his brother described in a letter to their father, spent his time "painting & waiting on the ladies" rather than "reviewing our studies for examination." Morse accepted portrait commissions from the Yale community, charging one dollar for a profile on paper, such as this one of his roommate, John Bartlett. Bartlett became a minister in New York and then Connecticut. In later years, Morse made his name as a full-scale portrait painter in Charleston, South Carolina, and then in New York, where he served as the first president of the National Academy of Design. Morse is even more celebrated now as the inventor of the electric telegraph and of Morse code.