Friday, October 23, 2020

Henry Walton Grinnell: Even More-- Part 1: About That Wilmington Expedition

From the "Howland Heirs:  Being a Story of a Family and a Fortune"  Published 1919.

Some more on Mr. Grinnell.  Until this year, I had never heard of him, but, he definitely lived an interesting life.

This short account of his life includes him receiving "honorable mention from the Navy Department for carrying dispatches from his ship through the Confederate line, undercover of darkness."  This is the very first of my many posts about this man and what started this thread.  This is the first I've come across that story since then.

This is when he delivered dispatches from the Union forces in Wilmington, North Carolina to William T. Sherman's Army at Fayetteville, North Carolina, and it was through enemy lines.  A very daring attempt.

It also says he enlisted in the U.S. Navy on June 23, 1862, and became a mate and within the same year raised to the rank of acting ensign.  Two years later, he was master of his own ship.

As far as his service in the Japanese Navy, it says he "helped build up the Navy which subsequently riddle the Russian fleet.  This would be the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.  He also was a reason japan was able to so soundly defeat the Chinese fleet in the Sino-Japanese War.

When the book was written, Grinnell was residing in St,. Augustine, Florida.  He had two wives.  The first was Louisa I. Platt, whom he married in 1874.  The second was Florence G. Roche, who he married in 1910.  She was the daughter of poet James Jeffrey Roche.

--Old B-Runner


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