John Minor Maury was born on October 19, 1826, in Washington, DC, to Richard Brooke Maury and Lucy Hunton. His father was a “Register of the U.S. Navy Department.” Maury enlisted in the navy on March 23, 1848, and he served as a 3^rd assistant engineer. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 7 inches tall, with dark hair and hazel eyes. According to one account, he “soon acquired the reputation of being one of the smartest young officers of the service.”

 

Maury served on the USS Warren from 1848 until 1852, after which he served as a 1^st assistant engineer on an expedition to the Isthmus of Panama from 1853 to 1854. On this expedition, one observed noted Maury’s “extraordinary energy and self-devotion.” He “not only cheered and sustained the failing spirit of his comrades, but actually supplied them with the food upon which the survivors subsisted until rescue came to them.” Maury resigned from the navy on September 17, 1856, after about nine years of service.

 

Maury sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and he enlisted in the Confederate navy on May 21, 1861. On October 7, 1861, he received a commission as a captain in the Confederate army. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Confederate artillery on August 8, 1862, and he was stationed at Chaffin’s Bluff in Henrico County, Virginia. Union forces captured him in the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm on September 29, 1864, and he was imprisoned at Fort Delaware.

 

Maury remained a prisoner at Fort Delaware until July 24, 1865, when he was released on oath of allegiance. He filed for a presidential pardon from President Andrew Johnson on October 19, 1865, in which he promised to “faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as “all laws and proclamations which [had] been made during the…rebellion.” President Johnson granted John his presidential pardon on October 26, 1865.

 

After receiving his presidential pardon, Maury was reportedly “employed as Engineer on the Imperial Railway in Mexico, and as Inspector of Levees for Louisiana.” He died on September 13, 1868, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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