Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas

by Charles Lee Lewis

The travel-worn family established a new home near Franklin, Tennessee, some eighteen miles north of Nashville. This section of the country was then on the outskirts of the western frontier, and it was in such an environment that young Maury spent the most formative years of his life. As a lad, he had to take his share of the burdensome work on the farm; and it appears from an incident long afterwards related by his brother that he had the distaste for farm work, which is common to boys. Their father had set them to work picking cotton, and Matthew showed his inventiveness by devising a way of shortening their labor. He suggested to his brother that they make short work of the cotton picking by pulling off the cotton balls bodily and cramming them into an old hollow hickory stump that was full of water. The scheme was a good one so long as it was undiscovered, but after a time the watchful eye of their father detected the boys in the act and a flogging was the result. The lives of the children on the frontier, however, were by no means wholly filled with toil. There was ample opportunity to enjoy out-door sports in all seasons of the year, and indoors the Maury family were not without resources for passing the time pleasantly and profitably. There were traditions of culture and even of scholarship in the family, and besides it should be remembered that the homes of the early settlers were rarely without at least a few good books.

Maury’s father, having observed that his own father had been too stern with his children, treated his large family with considerable indulgence; yet he was strict as to their religious training in the home and gathered the children together morning and night each day to read the Psalter antiphonally. In this way Matthew became so familiar with the Psalms of David that years afterwards he could give a quotation and cite chapter and verse as though he had the Bible before him. This early religious influence later colored all Maury’s thinking and writing to a very marked degree. His mother, who was known as a woman of great decision of character, endowed her son with this same quality which is so essential to greatness; while her husband passed on to Matthew much of his amiability and ingenuousness for which he was greatly liked throughout the neighborhood.

Maury received his elementary education in an “Old Field” school, where the seats were made of split logs with peg legs, where there were no blackboards and but few books, and where the pupils studied their lessons aloud. This method of study probably led to the custom of “singing geography”, the pupils being ranged round the room to chant geographical facts. Whether Maury was thus inducted into the mysteries of that science which his researches were afterwards so greatly to enrich is not known, for the only schoolbook that he makes reference to in his letters is the famous Webster’s “Blueback Speller”, which he says was the first book that was ever placed in his hands.

A better education than that afforded in these country elementary schools was, however, destined for Maury. When he was in his twelfth year, a dangerous fall from a tree so injured his back as to cause his father to consider it unwise for the lad to continue to work on the farm. He had already shown such aptitude for study that it was decided to send him to Harpeth Academy, then located about two miles from Franklin. In this school, Maury had as teachers the Reverend Doctor Blackburn, afterwards Chaplain to Congress; James Otey, who became the first Bishop of Tennessee; and William C. Hasbrouck, who was afterwards a distinguished lawyer in his native state, New York. The impression that Maury made upon these scholarly men was a very favorable and lasting one, and he retained their warm personal friendship as long as they lived.

It was with Dr. Blackburn that Maury began the study of Latin grammar, through which he marched with seven league boots in only seven days; this, of course, was a record for the school. Though he thus showed a capacity for learning languages, both at this time and later in the navy while on foreign stations, yet the field of science held the greatest attraction for Maury. His ambition to become a mathematician was aroused in a curious way. “The first man of science I ever saw in my infant days in the West”, he said, “was a shoemaker—old Mr. Neil. He was a mathematician; he worked out his problems with his awl on leather, and would send home his shoes with their soles covered with little x’s and y’s. The example of that man first awakened in my breast the young spirit of emulation; for my earliest recollections of the feelings of ambition are connected with the aspiration to emulate that man in mathematics”. The ambition to know and achieve early displayed itself in Maury, and in later life he pleasantly recalled to mind his “Tennessee school days when the air was filled with castles”.

Such, in brief, was the life of Maury as a lad in his adopted state,—a state which he came to love and to which he referred years afterwards, when he had traveled extensively and become a famous man, as “the loveliest of lands” and “the finest country I have ever seen”. Here he was nurtured with the best the frontier life had to offer, and given independence of mind, courage, and self-reliance; love of honor and a chivalrous respect for woman; an unassuming modesty which bordered on diffidence and bashfulness; a strongly religious inclination; and a burning desire to know and to achieve. With this equipment he would doubtless have made a name for himself if he had remained in Tennessee; but Providence directed his steps into a broader field where he was able to gain for himself much greater distinction,—one that was not alone national but international in its scope.

One of the well marked characteristics of Maury’s maturity was the breadth of his intellectual vision. His mind loved to exercise itself with large problems, and questions of world-wide interest. This trait in his character could not have been developed so well perhaps in any other career as in the one he chose,—service in the navy of the United States. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Maury’s father wished him to study medicine and promised him financial assistance in such an undertaking. As a physician, he doubtless would have reached great eminence and the science of medicine would almost certainly have received contributions from his original mind; but a military career presented greater attractions for the lad. At one time he considered entering West Point as a cadet, but some one returned from there with an unfavorable report and, besides, the bare mention of such a plan put his father in a rage; hence he decided against the army and instead determined to enter the United States Navy.

There were very good reasons for Maury’s wishing to become a naval officer. Indeed, all his life he had had a close personal interest in that branch of the government service. His eldest brother, John Minor Maury, at the age of thirteen, even before the family had left Virginia, had become a midshipman. He then had thrilling adventures in the South Seas, was with David Porter in the Essex during the bloody battle with the English at Valparaiso, and afterwards fought with Macdonough in the Battle of Lake Champlain. All this was enough to awaken the spirit of adventure and arouse the desire of emulation in the heart of a younger brother. And though John Maury had the misfortune, in 1824, to die of yellow fever on board his ship and be buried at sea off Norfolk, yet Matthew clung firmly to his decision in the face of the opposition of his family, particularly his father, to the entrance of a second son into so hazardous a profession.

Maury secured his midshipman’s warrant with comparative ease, through General Sam Houston, who was at that time the Representative of that district in Congress. This appointment was gotten, however, without his parents’ knowledge, and when it became known to his father he expressed his disapproval of his son’s conduct in very strong terms and determined to leave him to his own resources. But young Maury was very resourceful and contrived to purchase for seventy-five dollars a gray mare from his cousin Abram Maury’s overseer, which he was to sell upon reaching his destination, and then he was to repay the money. Still he had practically nothing for traveling expenses, but this obstacle was removed by his teacher, Mr. Hasbrouck, who gave him thirty dollars for assistance he had rendered in teaching the younger pupils in the Academy.

On the day of his departure on that Sunday in the spring of 1825, Maury’s father refused to tell him goodbye and turned his back,—it is said, not so much in anger as in sorrow at his leaving home. No doubt the lad’s heart was saddened by this circumstance as well as by the parting from the rest of the family, especially from his favorite brother Richard, only two years his senior, who had always been his inseparable companion. But he put on a brave front, mounted his “snow white steed”, and set forth on the long lonesome ride to Virginia, whence he was to make his way to Washington and there embark on his new career.