MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 



1806-1873. 



MRS. CORBIN, Lieutenant Maury's daughter and biographer, 

 claims for her father the recognition of the whole civilized 

 world ; for, she says, " the best part of his life was devoted 

 to the performance of services which conferred benefits on the 

 seafaring class of all countries, while the ideas to which he 

 first gave birth have since borne fruit, and are likely to be 

 useful to the whole human race." She adds that " in Maury we 

 have two characteristics, each valuable in itself, but which 

 almost invariably produce great results when they are combined. 

 He was endowed with extraordinary powers of application and 

 unflagging industry in working out the driest details. But he 

 also possessed a vivid imagination, so that the dry bones of 

 his new science were endowed with life and interest by the 

 magic touch of his descriptive pen. It was Maury who created 

 the science of the physical geography of the sea, and gave that 

 impetus to its study which, in other hands, continues to pro- 

 duce results alike of practical and speculative importance." 



Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in Spottsylvania County, 

 Virginia, January 24, 1806, and died in Lexington, Va., Febru- 

 ary i, 1873. He was descended on his father's side from two 

 families of Huguenot exiles, connected by marriage before 

 they left France, who settled in Virginia in 1714. His father, 

 Richard Maury, was the sixth son of the Rev. James Maury, 

 an Episcopal clergyman and teacher of Albemarle County, 

 Virginia, who numbered among his pupils three boys who after- 

 ward became Presidents of the United States, and five signers 

 of the Declaration of Independence. This scholar appears 

 to have been already interested in the great Northwest, and 

 his speculations respecting the Missouri River, the Western 

 mountains, and the rivers beyond them, then hardly known, 

 greatly impressed his pupil Jefferson, who, when he became 



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