These stories were told entirely straightforwardly, with the intention of being believed. How widely they were actually accepted is difficult to say. In retrospect it seems extremely curious that persons as prominent, as successful, as wealthy as Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard were never seen or heard by the public, were never mentioned in the newspapers, never ran for public office, their names never listed in any directories, biographies or encyclopedias, and in fact they were not noticed anywhere--except in the advertising material of Comstock & Co. and B.L. Judson. Perhaps such credulity was not unusual in the 1850s, before the advent of widely distributed newspapers and other means of communication, but more than fifty years later, in the early years of the present century, essentially the same version of the history of Dr. Morse was still being printed in the Comstock almanacs. *The Struggle for Control of the Indian Root Pills* The agreement of August 10, 1855, between Andrew J. White and the Comstocks established a partnership "for the purpose of manufacturing and selling Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills and for no other purpose," the partners thereof being A.J. White as an individual and Comstock & Brother as a firm. The new partnership was named A.J. White & Co., but White contributed no money or property--nothing but the right to Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. The Comstock firm supplied all of the tangible assets, together with the use of their existing business premises. In turn, Comstock was to receive three fourths and White one fourth of the profits. In brief, the new firm, although bearing White's name, was controlled by the Comstocks. It is not clear why Moore, the originator of the pills, was not taken into the new business or otherwise recognized in the agreement. As we have seen, White claimed absolute ownership of Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills, but Moore evidently did not agree, for he continued to manufacture and peddle his own pills, at the same time denouncing those prepared by A.J. White & Co. under Comstock control as forgeries. Moore had previously been in business in Buffalo, at 225 Main Street, under his own name; an announcement in the 1854 Buffalo City Directory (the _Commercial Advertiser_) describes his firm as successor both to C.C. Bristol and to Moore, Liebetrut & Co. The same directory shows White as merely a clerk at Moore's place of business, although he was made a partner sometime during 1854.