Stephen R. Mallory (1813-1873)

Born in Trinidad, Stephen Russell Mallory was educated at the Jesuit’s Spring Hill College in Alabama. He then studied law, and was admitted to the Florida bar in 1839. d to the Bar of the State of Florida in or about the year 1839. He srved as a volunteer in the Seminole War (1835-42). After serving the State of Florida as probate judge and the United States as collector of customs at Key West, he was elected to the United States Senate from Florida in 1851, and re-elected in 1857. When the Civil War beganm he resigned his seat in the Senate. President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of the Navy. He was obliged to create his navy out of nothing. History records the success with which this desperate situation was handled. When the end came, in April, 1865, he accompanied Jefferson Davis in his flight from Richmond. He then went to La Grange, Georgia, where his family were residing, was arrested there, and was kept a prisoner for ten months in Fort Lafayette, on a small island in New York. Released on parole in 1866, he returned to Pensacola, Florida, where he practised law until his death.
(Adapted from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia)