Howard Morgan was the adopted son of J.P. Morgan, famous banker and railroad tycoon. His adopted father only was with him for about a 15 years before he died of a stroke in 1913. To be frank, his death did not particularly fluster Howard. J.P. Morgan never spent much time with Howard, looking at him with a mixture of pity and loathing whenever they were forced to spend time together. He could not remember anything about his time before being adopted, everyone told him that he had fallen from a horse when young, and had a nasty head injury that caused him to forget many things. Curious about why he was adopted, Howard investigated, never to find an answer. He never even found out what state he was born in. Before his adopted father's death, he was put in a lesser board role in the Boston & Maine railroad company, specifically to oversee the management of Iron Horse Park in Billerica Mass. Howard, not being particularly business savvy, but quite wise in his own right, appointed an assistant to help him maintain his business ventures that he paid handsomely, and made an early retirement to Salem Massachusetts to live out his true passion; fraternization.
Being rather wealthy, and a product of his father's philanthropy, Howard was an avid philanthropist himself. Donating money to the less-fortunate, and to academia were passions of his, or at least ways to make himself feel better about what his hedonistic lifestyle. It was then a surprise that after spending quite a bit of money to fund some expedition that a Professor Elias Farnwright was going on (the exact nature of which Howard never particularly cared about learning), that the old man showed up at Howard's Salem residence. The conversation was quick, and cordial, he thanked Howard profusely for the donation of funds, nothing that normally would have stuck out in Howard's mind. However, the professor looked at him with the exact same expressions of fear and pity that his late father looked at him, something no one else had ever done since. As much as Howard tried to forget about it through the various vices of the time, the expression stuck with him, like a thorn in his mind. He was not entirely surprised then, to learn that apparently he had stuck in the old man's mind too, and had been invited to his funeral.
