A widower since 1804, Birkbeck had brought his seven children with him to America, and it was there that his daughter Eliza met and married Gilbert Titus Pell (1796-1860), who came from a prominent family of New York politicians.
In 1835 the family separated and Mrs Pell took her children first to Poughkeepsie, New York, then to Plymouth, England, in 1841, where Morris attended the New Grammar School.
"[2] In 1852, aged 24, Pell was chosen from twenty-six candidates to become the first Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the newly opened University of Sydney, in the British colony of New South Wales, Australia.
[1] With his new wife Jane Juliana (née Rusden), his mother and two sisters he sailed from England to Australia on the Asiatic and became one of the university's three foundation professors.
[3] In 1854, in evidence to a New South Wales Legislative Council select committee on education, Pell advocated the opening of a secular grammar school.