Paul Morphy Grave, Paul Morphy was a famed chess player, co…

Paul Morphy was a famed chess player, considered to be the greatest chess master of the 1840 and 1850s and claimed by some (including Bobby Fischer) to be one of the greatest chess players of all time. Born to a wealthy creole family, and apparently blessed with photographic memory, Paul Morphy had the means and time to take up chess, apparently learning it from observation as a young child. By age 9 he was the best player in New Orleans, defeating Maj Gen Winfield Scott, then Hungarian chess master Johann Löwenthal (2 wins, 1 draw) in 1850. Morphy then went to school, graduated, and passed the bar at age 19. Too young to legally practice, Morphy went back to chess. In 1857 he went to the First American Chess Congress, defeating German chess masters Theodor Lichtenhein and Louis Paulsen. Though he dominated the game in the United States, the best players were in Europe, and who looked down upon the young player and had little interest in traveling all the way across the ocean to play. After a back and forth between English chess master Howard Staunton, Morphy finally crossed the Atlantic. Ironically Morphy never did manage to schedule a game with Staunton, who some claimed simply avoided the upstart and an embarrassing defeat. Instead Morphy played and defeated French chess master Daniel Harrwitz, then German chess master Adolf Anderssen while sick with influenza. Running out of rivals, Paul Morphy resorted to various exhibitions, playing chess against up to eight rivals simultaneously while blindfolded. By 1859 he was hailed as best chess player in the world, and returned to the United States in triumph. With no more significant opposition, Morphy simply declared that he was giving up chess to return to law. Unfortunately this failed after the American Civil War, and he found that visitors simply wanted to discuss the game as opposed to legal issues. With his family fortune still backing him up, Paul Morphy simply idled the time away. He died in 1884 after sustaining a stroke in a cold bath during a hot day. He was 47. He is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, and fans occasionally offer tokens of chess pieces. Tremé, New Orleans, Louisiana

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