page_title: B.N. Morris Canoe Company
section_title: The Morris Company
hierarchical_section_title: B.N. Morris Canoe Company / The Morris Company
caption_attribution_description: English: B.N. Morris, circa 1910
context_page_description: The B.N. Morris Canoe Company of Veazie, Maine, produced wood and canvas canoes from 1891 until fire destroyed the factory late in 1919. The shapeliness, style, and workmanship of the Morris canoes and boats made some of the most picturesque craft that were ever built with this construction form.
context_section_description: The men behind the B.N. Morris Canoe Company were Bert Morris (24 June 1866 – 31 May 1940) and his older brother, Charles (10 February 1860 – 9 May 1928). Initially, canoes were built in a shop behind the Morris family home in Veazie, Maine. The building was four stories high, with a different aspect of canoe construction completed on each floor.
  E.H. Gerrish launched the wood-and-canvas canoe industry from his Bangor shop in the late 1870s. In the Old Town area, both E.M. White and Guy Carlton had head starts on an eventual giant, Old Town Canoe, which would quickly dominate the business. However, in the eyes of many aficionados, the finest of all the early wood and canvas canoes were manufactured in the little town of Veazie, exactly midway between the two better known cities, by the B.N. Morris Canoe Company.
  When the shop behind the family home became too small for the growing company, it was replaced by a large factory-complex consisting of nine buildings, each serving a step in the canoe-building process.
  Although Morris was not the first to market canvas-covered canoes, it was among the first to distribute through a system of dealerships. In the early years of the twentieth century, Morris began offering a less expensive factory-direct line of canoes under the name "Veazie Canoe Company". These canoes were identical to those carrying the B.N. Morris name with the exception of being trimmed in ash or maple rather than high grade mahogany.
  The evening of December 15, 1919, a fire, described in The Bangor Daily News as "... very spectacular, lighting up the country for miles around", destroyed the B.N. Morris factory complex. Articles from The Bangor Daily News and The Bangor Daily Commercial  contain accounts of the fire but contradict each other in regard to the possible location of the fire's start and the extent of loss. Both articles assure the public that the factory would be rebuilt, but it was not. The factory's office building survived the fire and is today the office of a Veazie motel known as The Stucco Lodge.
caption: B.N. Morris, circa 1910
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