MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 465 



President, secured the despatch of the expedition of Lewis and 

 Clark. In 1790 Richard Maury married Diana, daughter of 

 Major John Minor, of Topping Castle, in Caroline County, and 

 settled in Spottsylvania County, about ten miles west of Fred- 

 ericksburg. Nine children were the fruit of this marriage, 

 Matthew being the seventh, and the fourth of the five sons. 



When young Matthew was in his fifth year the family re- 

 moved to Tennessee, near Franklin, where they lived the life of 

 early settlers in a new country. The father was very exact in 

 the religious training of his children, assembling them morning 

 and evening to read the Psalter for the day, verse and verse 

 about. Matthew's first ambition to become a mathematician 

 was excited by an old cobbler "who used to send the shoes 

 home to his customers with the soles all scratched over with 

 little .r's and jy's." A fall from a tree in his twelfth year, by 

 which his back was injured, seems to have marked the turning 

 point of his life. His father, thinking him permanently dis- 

 abled, yielded to his wish and sent him to Harpeth Academy, 

 of which the Rev. J. H. Otey, afterward Protestant Episcopal 

 Bishop of Tennessee, and William C. Hasbrouck, were the 

 teachers. 



In 1825 he obtained, through the Hon. Sam Houston, a 

 midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. His father 

 did not approve the career to which this pointed, for his eldest 

 son, John Minor, had died of yellow fever in the service the 

 year before. Still he did not positively forbid Matthew to ac- 

 cept the appointment, so, having thirty dollars which he had 

 earned by doing tutor's work in the academy, young Maury 

 bought a gray mare, to be paid for when he should sell her 

 at the end of his journey, and started on his own account for the 

 East. After travelling two weeks he came among his Virgin- 

 ian kinsfolk in Albemarle County, where he sold the mare and 

 despatched the money she brought to her former owner. Here 

 he saw little Nannie Herndon, then a girl of twelve or thirteen 

 years, who was afterward to become his wife. She was the 

 eldest child of Elizabeth Hull and Dabney Herndon, of Fred- 

 ericksburg. There was no naval academy then, and young 

 Maury went on shipboard at once. He soon showed that his 

 mind was set upon mastering the theory and practice of his 

 profession. " It is related by some of his companions of that 

 period," says Mrs. Corbin, "how he would chalk diagrams in 



