MRS. E. E. MOFFIT CHOSEN MAURY ASSOCIATION HEAD

Name of Man Who Cuggested Name of Lee as Head of Confederate Army Honored.

Election of officers and the reading of reports featured the annual meeting of the Matthew Fontaine Maury  Association held yesterday at the Jefferson Hotel.

Mrs. E. E. Moffitt was re-elected president and Mrs. Mann S. Valentine, Mrs. John H. Southall, Mrs. T. Catesby Jones, Miss Lucy Munford and Mrs. Decatur Axtell, vice-presidents. Mrs. Beverly T. Crump was made recording secretary, with Mrs. Louise Kernodle, assistant. Gaston Lichtenstein is corresponding secretary, and Mrs. Herbert. W. Jackson, treasurer.

Significant and little known historical facts characterized the paper read by Mrs. Moffitt in connection with incidents in the life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.

Mrs. Moffitt reviewed Maury’s resignation from public office in Washington and his return to his native State, Virginia, to render all possible aid and assistance in driving the invader from her soil in the face of President Lincoln’s refusal to accent his resignation.

“He came to the capital of Virginia.” said Mrs. Moffitt, “where the sovereign convention was in session, and was selected by Governor Letcher as one of a council of three to advise, the Governor as to the best and quickest way of arming and protecting the State in her great emergency.

“The first advice he gave was to call Robert B. Lee to be commander-in-chief of the military forces of the State. He also advised Governor Letcher to call Major Thomas J. Jackson to take charge of the volunteers.

“In June, 1861, the advisory council of three was abolished, and Maury received his commission as commander of the Confederate navy, with the appointment as chief of river, harbor and coast defense.

After rendering notable service to the lost cause during the period of the war, Maury was given a professorship in the Military Institute of Virginia, dying in its service in September, 1873.

The Matthew Fontaine Maury Association already has the beginning of a fund, Mrs. Moffitt stated, to erect a bronze statue of the famous Virginia geographer in Richmond.

At the twenty-fifth annual convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, held in Louisville recently, Mrs. Moffitt presented a petition from the association of which she is the head, asking that the Daughters of the Confederacy lend their aid in erecting a fitting memorial to the proposed Maury monument.