MATTHEWMAURY

In the month of January, we honor three great Confederate heroes, General Robert E. Lee, General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, both of the Confederate States Army, and Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, of the Confederate States Navy. Much is known by all of us about General Lee and also, maybe to a lesser degree, about General Jackson. They were both great men and have our deepest admiration and gratitude. We have all read about them and seen movies and television programs on them and their contributions to the South. Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, however, is not as well know to most of us. In the interest of education, I have chosen to write an article in his memory. In no way do I mean to diminish the honor of General Lee and General Jackson. I am sure that if they were here with us, they would agree that you should know of Commander Maury as you know of them.

The information which I have included in this article is based on my reading of parts of three books on the life of Commander Maury. The main book which I used is "Scientists of the Civil War, Matthew Fontaine Maury and Joseph Henry,'" by Patricia Jahns, 1961. The other two books which I used are "Matthew Fontaine Maury, Trail Maker of the Seas," by Hildegarde Hawthorne, 1943, and "Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas," by Charles Lee Lewis, 1927. I did not find many books on Maury, and those that I did find are older books. All three of these are available from the Metro Davidson County, TN, library if you wish to learn more. These three authors have somewhat different perspectives on some areas of Maury's life, just as I am sure that if you were to ask any three (hopefully friends!) of mine or yours to write about us, you would get different information and different slants from each of them. I have tried to blend the information from these books into an article that will give you mostly facts and circumstances, leaving the whys and wherefores to you and your future readings. Without exception, all the authors present Commander Maury as a genius, an innovator and inventor, and a great man who made astounding scientific contributions, to the benefit of the entire world.

Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806 - 1873) is known as the "Pathfinder of the Seas." He was the first scientist of the United States Navy and the founder of the science of oceanography (study of the oceans). He was commissioned a Commander in the Confederate States Navy in 1861 and spent the last several years of his life on the faculty at Virginia Military Institute. His naval career was an unusual one, taking many twists and turns, some due to fate and circumstances, but others, both positive and negative, of his own making.

Matthew Fontaine Maury was born January 14,1806, on a four hundred acre farm near Fredericksburg, VA. He was the seventh of nine children, five sons and four daughters, of Richard and Diana Minor Maury. Richard Maury's Huguenot ancestors came to Virginia in 1718. Diana Minor was descended from Dutchman Dudes Minor, who had received a land grant in 1665 from King Charles II. Having a long line of illustrious colonial ancestors instilled a great sense of family pride in young Matthew and molded the future as he saw it should be for himself. However, in 1810, at the age of four, Matthew's family went West, removing him from what he would grow up to think should have been his aristocratic Virginia lifestyle. The family farm in Fredericksburg had been worn out from years of over planting, and the family did not have sufficient resources to restore it. A depression occurred in the agricultural South and the stage was being set for the War of 1812. Richard Maury's older brother Abraham had already moved to Tennessee, and that seemed to be where the opportunity lay for Richard and Diana's family. They moved their children, except for the eldest son John Minor Maury, who had joined the Navy as a midshipman at age thirteen, to Franklin, Tennessee, south of Nashville, bought land there and built a one-room cabin for their home.

Life on the frontier was both harsh and idyllic. Great fortunes were made and new family dynasties established. However, young Matthew did not find the life of a frontier farming family appealing. His interests, both natural and fueled by stories from his older brother at sea, lay elsewhere. Although he would speak with great affection for his Tennessee boyhood home, return to visit, and eventually bring his elderly parents to live with him, he longed for learning and adventures, beyond the hills of rolling farms. An unfortunate twist of fate started him on the road to his wishes when he took a bad fall from a tree at age twelve. The accident was thought at first to be so bad as to cripple him. But with the resolve that would carry him through so many other misfortunes, he recovered gradually, and his father felt that heavy farming duties were at least temporarily beyond him. So Matthew, to his delight, was enrolled locally in Harpeth Academy, to study to become a doctor, so his father thought. Once there, however, Matthew found that he loved and excelled at languages and math, and wanted to continue to learn in general, not become a country doctor. He longed to broaden his horizon further, and to the dismay of his father, and without his personal or financial backing, Matthew managed to have himself appointed as a midshipman in the Navy, and set out for Virginia, at age nineteen, financed by gifts and loans from friends and teachers.