[Illustration: Matthew Fontaine Maury.] On the father’s side he was of Huguenot descent. Rev. Jas. Fontaine thus gives an account of Maury’s ancestor, Jean de la Fontaine, a French nobleman who held an exalted position in the court of Francis I: When the “Edict of Nantes” was revoked the persecution of the Protestants followed, and Fontaine was a shining light for the Catholics, and it was deemed advisable to get rid of so prominent a heretic as soon as possible. A band of ruffians were dispatched on the memorable St. Bartholomew’s eve, and Fontaine and his wife were dragged from their beds and their throats cut. “Oh, my children!” exclaimed the narrator, “let us not forget that the blood of martyrs flows in our veins.” This may explain the strong religious bent of Maury’s nature, which was evident to all long before he connected himself with the Episcopal Church. He was born near Fredericksburg, in Spottsylvania County, Va., January 24, 1806. When he was four years old his parents moved to Tennessee and settled near Franklin. Maury assisted his father and brothers on the farm, and lived the life of the early settler in a new country. He thus became a sturdy, healthy boy. Here in the wilderness schools and churches were alike few and far between, and the education of the pioneer’s children was derived at home, or in the “old held school.” Plain living and high thinking was the motto in the Maury household. Matthew’s father was strict in the religious training of his family. He would assemble them night and morning to read the Psalter for the day antiphonally, and in this way so familiar did the barefooted boy become with the Psalms of David that in after life he could cite a quotation and give chapter and verse, as if he had the Bible open before him. Surrounded by simple and pure influences, Maury passed his youth. He possessed a deep and inquiring mind and an insatiable craving for truth. Perhaps his greatest mental strength lay in the direction of mathematics. “My first ambition,” he says, “to become a mathematician was excited by an old cobbler, Neal by name, who lived not far from my father’s home, and who used to send the shoes home to his customers with the soles scratched all over with little x’s and y’s.” Maury was sent to the Harpeth Academy, taught by the Rev. James Otey, first Bishop of Tennessee, and Wm. Hasbrouck, afterwards a prominent lawyer of New York. Here his brilliant mind and studious habits won the esteem of his teacher, which lasted through life.