Middlebury Institute receives its largest gift yet: $4.5 million from Samuel F.B. Morse estate.

The legacy of Samuel F.B. Morse is deeply felt on a daily basis on the Monterey Peninsula.

Known as the “Founder of Pebble Beach” and the “Duke of Del Monte,” Morse crafted the Pebble Beach community starting in 1919, and in the process he  preserved the Del Monte Forest from clear-cutting, set aside land for wildlife and later created easements to protect the coastline.

He also developed eight golf courses, rebuilt the Del Monte Hotel and Lodge at Pebble Beach and proposed building the Del Monte Shopping Center in the 1950s, a task his company completed in 1967.

As passionate as he was about his home on the coast, he was also an avid traveler, and a believer in the power of understanding other languages and cultures. That led him to play a role in the early days of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, then called the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which was founded 63 years ago.

Morse underwrote the loan to purchase Monterey’s former city library, now the Segal Building at MIIS. He continued his support of the institute through his work as president of the Monterey Foundation. MIIS officials in turn named a building after him, the S.F.B. Morse Building on Van Buren Street in Monterey.

Now Morse’s legacy at MIIS will reach even farther into the world through its students with a $4.5 million bequest from his estate, the institute announced Sept. 4. It’s the largest single gift in the school’s history.

Morse died in 1969 at age 84, but a trust he created specified that his heirs would receive incomes until the passing of his longest living child, at which point his fortune was to split between MIIS, his alma mater Yale University, and the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach.

His youngest daughter, Mary Morse Shaw, passed away in April at the age of 97, triggering the distribution of trust funds.

“We are honored and deeply grateful to Mr. Morse and his family for believing in the Institute’s mission during the early years, and for planning to provide generous support well into the future,” MIIS President Laurie L. Patton said in a post on the MIIS website.

The institute is establishing a special fund in Morse’s name that will support student scholarships, academic programs and other initiatives.

"This fabulous gift will be applied to our highest priorities—student scholarships and immersive learning opportunities—and also used to explore new avenues and approaches in teaching and learning," Patton said. “This visionary trust is one more way Mr. Morse will leave his indelible mark on the Peninsula, a community he not only envisioned, but helped to build.”

Morse’s grandson and biographer, Charles Osborne, believes his grandfather would approve of the institute’s continuing mission.

“When he was approached by the Institute at its inception he understood that the charter was to provide an education for those who wished to be in the foreign service or do business abroad and who wished to polish their language skills,” Osborne said in the website post.

“The Institute has done that and more and continues to do so. S.F.B. would be proud of the institution that has grown to be such an important part of Monterey, and of what it has contributed to the world.”