Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826) was a preacher, educator, publisher, geographer, conspiracy theorist, and pioneer of the use of semaphore flags for long-distance visual communications. Morse would be best known for his pioneering work in geography textbooks specially focused on developing an understanding in young Americans about the vast nation to which they were citizens. His textbook The American Geography, published in later editions as The American Universal Geography, was wildly popular and greatly influenced the standardization of the American education system. Updated geographic dictionaries with current legal, demographic, historic, and economic information published as gazettes came out annually and added to Morse’s renown as the “father of American geography.” His eldest son, Samuel Morse, was a noted painter and inventor who was influenced by his father’s work and by 1837 develop the globally recognized standard for telegraphic communications—the Morse code. Jedidiah’s two younger sons, Sidney and Richard Morse, would help their father and publish other geographical texts before founding the New York Observer, one of the most influential American religious newspapers of the nineteenth century.