William G. Morgan William G. Morgan William George Morgan (January 23, 1870 – December 27, 1942) was the inventor of volleyball, originally called "Mintonette", a name derived from the game of badminton which he later agreed to change to better reflect the nature of the sport. He was born in Lockport, New York, US. He met James Naismith, inventor of basketball, while Morgan was studying at Springfield College in 1892. Like Naismith, Morgan pursued a career in Physical Education at the YMCA. Influenced by Naismith and basketball, in 1895, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Morgan invented "Mintonette" a less vigorous team sport more suitable for
William Morgan (anti-Mason) part of the background story of his popular scientific allegorical novel "Etidorhpa" (1895), on the kidnapping of William Morgan and the start of the Anti-Masonry movement. In his novel "The Craft: Freemasons, Secret Agents, and William Morgan" (2010), the author Thomas Talbot presents a fictional version of the William Morgan kidnapping. He portrays him as a British spy, includes rogue British Masons, and has presidential agents thwart an assassination plot. William Morgan (anti-Mason) William Morgan (1774 – c. 1826) was a resident of Batavia, New York, whose disappearance and presumed murder in 1826 ignited a powerful movement against the Freemasons,