distinguished in the defense of that place. He was appointed United States Minister to Colombia, South America (1885-1889) by President Cleveland and to him we owe the foregoing interesting narrative of his father's career.
The sad news of Captain John Minor Maury's burial at sea was brought to Fredericksburg by a special messenger on horseback from Norfolk. It was conveyed to his wife by Dabney Herndon, [1] the lifelong friend of both, as she sat with her two little boys awaiting the arrival of her husband. Dabney Herndon took the widow and her sons to his home, where they lived as honored members of his family until his death.
This act of friendship bore a rich harvest of love and affection for the orphaned children of Dabney Herndon, to whom Captain John Minor Maury's widow was ever after a mother.
In 1825, the Honorable Sam Houston, then a member of Congress for Tennessee, obtained for Matthew Fontaine Maury, a midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. But Matthew Maury's father did not approve of the midshipman's warrent and the perils of the sea for another son, and, while he did not positively forbid the boy's acceptance of it, he refused to give him one cent towards defraying the expenses of the journey East, and even denied him a parting blessing.
Not daunted, Matthew Fontaine Maury borrowed a gray mare, named Fanny, from a kind neighbor, and with only thirty dollars in his pocket, paid to him by Mr. Hasbrouck for assisting in the instruction of the younger pupils of Harpeth Academy, he bade farewell to home and parents, and set out with a bold heart and the scant experience of nineteen years to seek his fortune. Years afterwards he said:—"The bitterest pang I felt on leaving home was parting with my brother Dick, two years my senior. We two had hitherto been inseparable; we slept together, studied out of the same book, and shared every joy and every sorrow. In our talks
- ↑ This gentleman's eldest daughter married the subject of this biography ten years afterwards.
