[22] In 1888 Norway, through Rear Admiral Neils Ihlen, Royal Norwegian Navy, sent to Maury’s children the sum of $2180.74 which had been intended to be applied to the Testimonial Fund.
[23] The last letter that Maury received from the unfortunate Empress enclosed photographs of herself and Maximilian. After becoming insane, she was taken to the Château de Bouchout in Brabant, Belgium, where she continued to write pathetic love letters to her “dearest Maximilian”, whom she did not realize to have been dead. Death came to her at the age of eighty-six, on January 19, 1927. During the World War, a heavy guard was placed around her villa by order of the Kaiser and this placard set up: “This villa is the property of Her Majesty the Empress of Mexico, sister of His Majesty Francis Joseph, Kaiser of Austria. Disturbances in the neighborhood will be punished with the utmost severity”.
[24] It has often been stated that the poet Tennyson received the LL.D. from Cambridge at this same time. This is incorrect. A letter of May 12, 1926, from the Registrary of Cambridge University states that on May 28, 1868, the “Degree of LL.D. honoris causa was conferred upon: Frederick Max Müller, Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford; William Wright, Assistant in the Department of MSS., British Museum; and Matthew Fontaine Maury of Virginia”.
[25] In 1912 it was revised as “Maury’s New Complete Geography” and copyrighted by the American Book Company, and is still on the market.
[26] This was the name given to Washington College in 1871 after the death of General Lee on October 12, 1870.
[27] The opening stanzas of “Through the Pass” by Margaret J. Preston.
[28] Mrs. Maury survived her husband until the year 1901.
[29] Great praise is due Mrs. E. E. Moffitt for founding this Maury Association, and successfully raising the money necessary to build the monument to Maury in Richmond.
[30] Of the numerous portraits of Maury, those deserving special mention are in Richmond. There is one by N. H. Busey in the Westmoreland Club of that city, another by John A. Elder in the Virginia State Library, and a third of some merit in Battle Abbey, Richmond. In the State Library is also a cast of the fine bust of Maury made by Edward V. Valentine of Richmond in 1869, which is considered by Mrs. Werth to be a very excellent likeness of her father. There is a statue of Maury over the main entrance to the Meteorological Station of the German Admiralty in Hamburg, Germany. Recently, the M. F. Maury Chapter of the Children of the American Revolution has been organized at Franklin, Tennessee by Miss Susie Gentry.
[31] In “American Adventures” (1917), pp. 140–145.