His father was Judge Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley, a prominent local lawyer and businessman, who became the first president of the Aetna Life Insurance Company.

Morgan Gardner Bulkeley was born on December 26, 1837, in East Haddam, Connecticut, to an old local family; both his parents descended from passengers of the Mayflower more than 200 years prior.

[11] His older brother Charles rose to the rank of captain of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Regiment, but died of disease in camp in February 1864, making Morgan the judge's oldest surviving son, and slated to eventually assume his responsibilities.

[12] When Judge Bulkeley died in 1872, Morgan returned to Hartford to look after his father's estate and was made a board member of Aetna.

[16] Chicago White Stockings owner William Hulbert devised a plan to form a new league with the strongest NA teams.

[18] Like all that happened during this historic [February 2, 1876] meeting, several versions exist regarding the nomination and election of Morgan Bulkeley as the National League's first president.

His sweeping, steer-horn mustache, erect soldier-straight posture and serious, stoic countenance made him, on appearance alone, the ideal candidate for almost any presidency.

Albert Spalding later remembered that Bulkeley was reluctant, but was persuaded by Hulbert, who said it was a tribute to the East, where baseball had its origin and early development.

According to Irv Goldfarb in his article on Bulkeley for the Society for American Baseball Research, "the highly provincial world of early professional ball dictated that naming an Easterner to the post would be the most propitious political move".

[23] As head of the Hartford franchise, Bulkeley refused to allow his team's scores to be transmitted from the ballpark to where fans not attending the game gathered, something the Chicago Tribune deemed a stupid idea.

[21] Bulkeley was one of the seven members of the 1905 Mills Commission formed by Spalding, the group that gave credence to the story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball.

When he ran again in 1880, he secured many votes of Irish immigrants in the city wards alongside the Connecticut River, which had given him his margin of defeat in 1878, by buying them.

[33] Charles W. Burpee, in his history of Hartford County, deemed Bulkeley's mayoralty "most businesslike and efficient ... instituting and promoting many important municipal projects, while he disbursed more than his salary in providing pleasure or comfort for the city's poor.

"[34] In 1886, Bulkeley sought the Republican nomination for a two-year term as governor of Connecticut, but was defeated at the state convention by Phineas Lounsbury.

[35] The party custom of rotation in office meant that Governor Lounsbury would not seek a second term, and in 1888, Bulkeley was nominated by the Republicans, with Democrats choosing Luzon Morris as their nominee.

Under the law at the time, the Connecticut General Assembly decided elections for state office when no candidate received a majority of the vote, and the Republican-dominated legislature selected Bulkeley.

[38] Despite the tradition of rotation in office, Bulkeley sought renomination in 1890, but was defeated at the state convention, which chose Samuel E. Merwin, whose Democratic opponent was Morris.

However, after the Supreme Court of Connecticut in January 1892 ruled that Bulkeley was legally governor, Staub agreed to pay some of the state's bills.

[42][43] In 1901, Connecticut amended its constitution to provide that a candidate for state office could be elected with only a plurality, rather than an absolute majority, of the vote.

[45][46] At the 1896 Republican National Convention, Bulkeley was Connecticut's favorite son candidate for vice president, and finished third in the balloting to become former Ohio governor William McKinley's running mate, losing to Garret Hobart of New Jersey.

Hawley had fallen seriously ill (he would die only two weeks after his term in the Senate expired, in March 1905), and Fessenden had blundered politically by charging an excessive legal fee on money gained from the federal government that Connecticut had been owed since the Civil War.

By some accounts, he caught a chill at the funeral; he fell ill and died on April 21, making Bulkeley the senior senator from Connecticut after seven weeks of service, a distinction Hawley had never attained in his four six-year terms.

[59] In 1972, the Nixon administration reversed Roosevelt's actions and changed the discharges to honorable, in most cases posthumously (two soldiers were still living).

Bulkeley gave a statement saying that he would have won had there been a primary election, and that he intended to return to Hartford after his term expired on March 3 and devote himself to business.

[63] Bulkeley devoted much of his time in his final years to other philanthropic causes, taking the lead in raising money to save Hartford's Old State House.

In 1916, Bulkeley was a guest of honor at a banquet celebrating the National League's 40th anniversary, with former president Taft the featured speaker.

[65] Both of Bulkeley's sons and three of his nephews served in France during World War I, and Aetna employees bought almost $24 million in Liberty Loan bonds, purchases urged by the company president, "Get what is left in your vest pockets and turn them inside out; search your trousers' pockets and take what's left; even go into your stockings and give of your saving.

[4] The elder son, Morgan Bulkeley Jr., was gassed in World War I and never regained his full health, dying at age 40 in 1926, leaving three children.

[65] Bulkeley's biographer, Murphy, described his subject's life, "Beyond the dreams of most men—and for the greater part of his long life—he completely controlled his world.

[14] Bulkeley's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, 15 years after his death, is controversial due to the brevity of his involvement in the game.