Page 155
“…wound up on a list…”
Williams, F. L. (1963). Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the sea. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 273-74.
“…traveling to Liverpool…”
Maury was traveling back and forth to England often during these years—which probably explains the work he was later assigned when he joined the Confederate Navy, as will be described later in later chatpers.
Williams, F. L. (1963). Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the sea. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 215, 351.
“…Robert H. Maury had a home…”
The Maupin-Maury house is now the alumni house of the Medical College of Virginia, in association with Virginia Commonwealth University.
Scott, M. W. (1993). Houses of old Richmond. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, pp. 245-46.
“…sometimes used in whaling…”
Although Maury’s experiments with torpedoes are usually held not to have begun until the start of the Civil War, his first intimation of a possible mine or torpedo dated from well before that. From this, I believe it’s fair to suggest that his experiments might have begun earlier than has been previously thought.
Williams, F. L. (1963). Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the sea. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 227, 550.
“…large iron bathtub…”
Scott, M. W. (1993). Houses of old Richmond. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, p. 245.
“The laboratory in the basement…”
Williams, F. L. (1963). Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the sea. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, p. 390.
“…Egyptian Building…”
The Egyptian Building—where Anarcha will live for a time, as described in later chapters—still stands.
Sanger, W. T. (1973). Medical College of Virginia before 1925, and University College of Medicine 1893-1913. Richmond: Medical College of Virginia Foundation, p. 298.
“One afternoon in 1855…”
As described above (See “Dr. Harris told John Duncan…” and “…the plantation’s doctor woman…” and “Mittag told Maury…,” above), there is no clear record of how Anarcha moved from Alabama to Richmond and New York. What is firmly established is that Matthew Fontaine Maury knew Sims’s former teacher (and Sims continued to know Mittag in these years), and his cousin Lewis came to be Anarcha’s enslaver. That said, while it is certainly the case that Matthew Fontaine Maury crossed paths with Anarcha—either at Old Mansion, or at the Egyptian Building when she was being experimented upon there—details of their interaction, and the use of Matthew Fontaine Maury as the vector that would transmit Anarcha from Richmond and ultimately to Sims in New York, is speculative, perhaps even likely.
Details of how Anarcha came to be present at the Egyptian Hospital when Maury arrived in 1855 will be documented later in the book.
“He owned but few slaves…”
Maury’s biographer claims that he owned just a single enslaved woman. However, his daughter’s diary—a famous chronicle of the Civil War—lists a number of enslaved persons owned by Maurys in Fredericksburg. These may or may not have belonged to Maury; I thought it best to err on the side of caution.
Williams, F. L. (1963). Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the sea. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, p. 278.
“…Virginia’s slave population…”
Letter from Matthew Fontaine Maury to Mary Minor Blackfored, 1851.
Caskie, J. A. (1928). Life and letters of Matthew Fontaine Maury, pp. 119-20.
