He was the son of a minister, Reverend Daniel Morton, who with his wife Lucretia Parsons, like so many other clergymen, was obliged to exist on a starvation salary, only six hundred dollars a year.

Among his ancestors was George Morton of Battery, Yorkshire, financial agent in London of the _Mayflower_.

Mr.
L.P.Morton may have inherited his financial cleverness from this ancestor.
After studying at Shoreham Academy, he entered a country store at Enfield, Massachusetts, and was there for two years, then taught a district school, and later entered a general store at Concord, New Hampshire, when only seventeen.

His father was unable to send him to college, and Mr.Estabrook, the manager of the store, decided to establish him in a branch store at Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth College is located, giving him soon afterward an interest in the business.

Here he stayed until nearly twenty-four years old.