Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 5 - Section III
III. The Maury Family.
Matthew Maury, of Castel Mauron, in the Province of Gascony, came to Dublin as a Protestant refugee in 1714. On 20th October 1716 he married Mary Ann Fontaine (who was born on 12th April 1690) the eldest daughter of the Rev. James Fontaine, who describes his son-in-law as “a very honest man and a good economist, but without property.” In 1717 he made a voyage to Virginia, and took a portion of the land which John had purchased, and having given orders for building a dwelling-house, he returned to Dublin. In September 1719 the Maury family sailed for America, and arrived there in due time as settlers.
The eldest child, James, was born in Dublin, and made the voyage to Virginia in the unconsciousness of infancy. Afterwards a daughter was added to the family, named Mary, who became the wife of Daniel Claiborne. And in 1731 Abraham Maury brought up the rear, a very favourite child, who grew up to be a devoted son, an excellent man, and a successful merchant.
The good refugee, Matthew Maury, died in 1752. His widow writes to John and Moses Fontaine on the 15th April, as their “most afflicted and affectionate sister and servant to command.” “I have been deprived of the dearest partner of my joys and affections. He made the most uneasy things tolerable to me, and though I knew we were mortal, and that we must soon part, yet by my continual indispositions, I thought my labours were the nearest at an end. . . . Cruel self-love, that I should lament the happiness of that good soul which is gone before me, to attain the immortal crown of glory which God has promised through the merits of our blessed Saviour to them that trust in him.” Her husband (one of the family writes) “left her the house, land, and stock, household furniture, and six working slaves during her life, besides £20 a year.”
Most reluctantly did these settlers own slaves. Not their own desires, but the politicians of old England, brought this about. The Rev. Peter Fontaine calls them, “our intestine enemies, the slaves,” and he writes in 1757, “Our Assembly hath often attempted to lay a duty upon them which would amount to a prohibition, such as ten or twenty pounds a-head: but no Governor dare pass such a law, having instructions to the contrary from the Board of Trade at home. By this means they are forced upon us, whether we will or will not. This plainly shows the African company hath the advantage of the colonies, and may do as it pleases with the Ministry.” In the house of this brother Mrs. Maury died on 31st December 1755.
Her son was the Rev. James Maury. He paid a visit to England in 1742, when he received ordination from the Bishop of London. On his return he became minister of Fredericksville parish, Louisa county. He married a niece of Colonel Walker, described as the chief person in the Ohio Company, in whose territory he settled. His letters to his uncles in England (to whom he signs himself sometimes “Your dutiful nephew and affectionate friend” — sometimes, “Yours affectionately and dutifully,”) show him to have been a sensible and able man. I find the names of six children, Matthew, James, and Walter, his sons, and Ann, Mary, and Elizabeth, his daughters.
Of these, James Maury and his son, with their wives, replanted the family in England. They were merchants in Liverpool, and Mr. Maury, sen., as a special mark of the esteem of the community, received the freedom of the borough. The second wife of Mr. Maury, jun., was an Englishwoman, and having visited America she published a book entitled “The Englishwoman in America.” Both father and son had become widowers soon after landing in England: in her book Mrs. Sarah Mytton Maury gives us this reminiscence:— “The father and the son had each borne to the shores of England a daughter of their country — had borne them thither but to die. The emphatic words of that venerable man still ring in my ear as he thus addressed my husband, who had alluded to his wish to carry me his English partner to America, My son, every exotic will thrive in a foreign land, except a woman.” There is an engraved portrait of the venerable “James Maury, Esq., drawn on stone by Richard Lane, from a picture by G. S. Newton.”
Ann Maury, to whom my readers are so much indebted, is his daughter. As to the invaluable book, “The Huguenot Family,” she says in the Preface, “On the former appearance of a portion of the present book, many supposed it to be a work of imagination merely, presented under the guise of autobiography. It is therefore proper now to state that it is in truth, what on the title page it purports to be, an authentic narrative of actual occurrences, and is drawn entirely from family manuscripts.”
It would be to trench on American ground to trace the exact parentage of Commander Maury of the American Navy, who by his writings has made the family name universally known. It is satisfactory, in referring to Knight’s English Cyclopedia, to have ocular demonstration of his descent from James Fontaine and Matthew Maury, for we find that Matthew Fontaine Maury, author of " The Physical Geography of the Sea," was born in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, on the 14th January 1806.