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Salem's about-face on Matthew Maury on agenda

New England mariner's descendants change tack on shunning oceanography's inventor for his Confederate sympathies

Date published: 2/7/2008

By CLINT SCHEMMER

Time heals all wounds, the old adage says. But it sure can take awhile.

In the case of some New Englanders and Fredericksburg-area native Matthew Fontaine Maury, the mending took 146 years.

But today, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities is to announce that Maury--famed "Pathfinder of the Seas"--will no longer be shunned by an august Salem, Mass., group that had held him in official disgrace since the Civil War began.

The change of heart comes after months of dialogue between the Salem Marine Society and the Virginia organization, said Gail Braxton, director of the APVA's Mary Washington Branch.

"We're just delighted it has worked out," Braxton said yesterday. "We feel it is a wonderful way to honor and bring to life, in Virginia as well as Massachusetts, to the very important contributions of Matthew Fontaine Maury and, at the same time, preserve the Marine Society's history."

branded a traitor

The Marine Society was founded in 1766 by 18 sea captains in Salem, a port that became the hub of the young nation's lucrative trade with the East Indies. Its members roster reads like a Who's Who of American maritime history.

APVA members learned of Maury's lowly reputation in Salem during a visit there in the fall of 2006. While staying at the historic Hawthorne Hotel, they were granted a rare peek inside its most curious feature, the rooftop penthouse where the Salem Marine Society has been meeting for decades.

Its otherworldly home, called the Ship's Cabin, mimics the deckhouse of the 145-foot Salem-built bark Taria Topan, last seagoing command of society member Edward B. Trumbull.

There, ensconced amid the teak-and-cypress woodwork, the APVA visitors found a portrait of Maury, turned upside down, face to the wall, beside a plaque branding him a traitor.

It wasn't always so.

Maury, a self-taught genius who revolutionized ocean travel with his more accurate navigational aids, was named the society's first honorary member in 1859. His portrait was hung with those of the Marine Society's founders and heroes.

This in the home of Nathaniel Bowditch, considered the founder of modern maritime navigation.

Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-73), a Spotsylvania County native who later lived in Fredericksburg, is famed for pioneering work in the field of oceanography. An injury in 1839 that prevented him from serving aboard ship ended the naval officer's active career at sea. Maury was named head of the Navy's Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington, where he began an exhaustive study of oceanographic and meteorological data collected by U.S. warships cruising the globe. The resulting charts became the standard aboard naval and merchant ships, both American and foreign--and still are today. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Maury went with it and was commissioned into the state's navy, soon merged into the larger Confederate States Navy. He was instrumental in designing mines and buying ships abroad to raid commercial vessels supplying the Union. Upon war's end, Maury--who had lived in exile in Mexico and England--returned to the United States to teach physics at the Virginia Military Institute. nps.gov/sama hawthornehotel .blogspot.com/2007/04/peak-at-salem-marine-society.html pem.org/museum historypoint.org/columns2.asp?column _id=498&column _type=hpfeature vmi.edu/archivesaspx?id =19209 civilwar.si.edu/navies_maury.html usno.navy.mil/pao/Histo ry/command_history.shtml The South also engaged in the 19th-century practice of reversing people's portraits to signal disgrace. Frank O'Reilly, a historian with Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park, notes that the family of Gen. George Thomas--the "Rock of Chickamaugua"--was so incensed by his Union service that they turned his portrait to the wall in the dining room of his ancestral home in Southside Virginia. The APVA's Mary Washington Branch will formally announce the results of its Maury Project at 10 a.m. today in the Central Rappahannock Regional Library headquarters' auditorium, and detail upcoming events. UMW geographer Stephen Hanna will speak on "Race, Memory and Fredericksburg's Changing Heritage Tourism."

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Date published: 2/7/2008