Francis J. Higginson

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This article is about the United States Navy admiral. For the Puritan minister, see Francis Higginson.
Francis J. Higginson
Rear admiral
Commands held
Battles/wars
American Civil War
Union blockade
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip

Spanish–American War

Puerto Rican Campaign
Other workCommander-General, Naval Order of the United States, 1917–1925

Francis John Higginson (July 19, 1843 – September 12, 1931)

North Atlantic Fleet
.

Early life

Higginson was born in

Boston, Massachusetts, on July 19, 1843. He was raised in Deerfield, Massachusetts.[1]

Naval career

Early career

Higginson was appointed as an acting midshipman on September 21, 1857, and entered the United States Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1861, when he was promoted to midshipman.[1]

American Civil War

The

Pensacola Navy Yard.[1][2]

Detaching from Colorado in 1862, Higginson became

New Orleans, Louisiana, where Higginson participated in action against the Confederate artillery batteries at Chalmette, Louisiana, and the capture of New Orleans.[1]

Promoted to

commerce raider CSS Tallahassee in August 1864.[1] He became executive officer of the monitor USS Passaic, and was aboard her for her bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1865.[1]

Post–Civil War

Higginson had a tour on the staff of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1865, and later that year reported aboard the sloop-of-war

receiving ship USS New Hampshire at Norfolk, Virginia, in September 1868. In December 1868 he became a watch officer aboard the flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron, the screw frigate USS Franklin, and in December 1869 he became the navigator aboard the sloop-of-war USS Richmond. He next served as executive officer of the sloop-of-war USS Shenandoah from August 1871 to July 1873.[1]

Higginson was assigned to the U.S. Naval Academy again in September 1873, but in November 1873 reported back aboard Franklin in the European Squadron for a tour as her executive officer, just in time for orders to arrive for the European,

Key West, Florida, in case the Virginius Affair that arose that month resulted in a war with Spain. It took until early February 1874 for all units of the three squadrons to arrive at Key West, by which time the crisis had passed, but the three squadrons did engage that month in the first open-ocean tactical exercises by a multi-ship force in the history of the U.S. Navy, whose training and operations – other than those in coastal waters and rivers during the Civil War – previously had been limited to single ships operating individually.[1][4]

Higginson became executive officer of the monitor

Boston, Massachusetts, in July 1874. In January 1875, he became executive officer of the receiving ship USS Ohio at Boston. He reported to the Torpedo School at Newport, Rhode Island, in May 1875 for instruction in the employment of torpedoes, and after completing it reported to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in September 1875 for special duty inspecting rifle ordnance at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York. He was promoted to commander on 10 June 1876 while performing this duty.[1]

In December 1877, Higginson was ordered to

Chinese Navy's Fujian Fleet.[5]

In 1887, Higginson attended the

Brooklyn, New York, beginning in December 1895. He was captain of the yard there from June 1896 to July 1897, when he became commanding officer of the battleship USS Massachusetts in the North Atlantic Squadron.[5]

Spanish–American War

In April 1898, just before the outbreak that month of the

Vice Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete. After Cervera's squadron arrived in the Caribbean, the Flying Squadron searched for it there. Eventually, the Flying Squadron found Cervera's ships at Santiago de Cuba and commenced a blockade of the port, soon joined by Sampson and the North Atlantic Squadron.[7]

During the blockade, Massachusetts was among ships exchanging fire with Spanish coastal fortifications and the

Major General Nelson A. Miles that landed at Guánica, Puerto Rico, on July 25, 1898.[10] Just before the war ended, Higginson received a promotion to commodore on August 10, 1898.[10]

Later career

Higginson left Massachusetts after the war and became chairman of the

North Atlantic Fleet
. He became the new fleet's first commander-in-chief, serving in that capacity until 1903.

After relinquishing command of the North Atlantic Fleet, Higginson became commandant of the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., in July 1903. He served in that capacity until 19 July 1905, when he retired from the Navy upon reaching the statutory retirement age of 62.[10][11]

Later life

Upon his retirement, Higginson and his wife, the former Grace Glenwood Haldane (1854–1938), settled in Kingston, New York[10][12] not far from Grace Higginson's home town, Cold Spring.[12][13] He was a leader in Kingston's civic and social life. He also was chairman of the Sampson Memorial Committee, which unveiled the Sampson Memorial Window at the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on 16 November 1908 for Rear Admiral Sampson of Spanish–American War fame, who had died in 1902.[10][14] Higginson was Commander-General of the Naval Order of the United States from 1917 to 1925.[15]

Higginson died in Kingston on September 12, 1931.

Arlington, Virginia.[17]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Some sources list Higginson's date of death as September 12, 1931 and others as September 13, 1931, but a death notice appearing in the September 14, 1931 edition of The Lewiston Daily (see The Lewistin Daily, September 14, 1931) with a dateline of September 13, 1931 states that he had died "yesterday," indicating that he died on 12 September 1931. The confusion regarding his date of death may arise from confusion over whether "yesterday" meant the day before the newspaper was published or the day before the dateline of the obituary.
  2. ^ Sources disagree on the name of the schooner; according to Hamersly, p. 12, she was named Judith, but the USS Colorado entry in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships identifies her as Judah.

Footnotes

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-59853-197-8
    .
  2. ^ Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships: Colorado (Screw Frigate) I
  3. ^ Hamersly 1902, pp. 6, 12.
  4. ^ Rentfrow 2014, pp. 7–8, 25–30, 137, 144.
  5. ^ a b c Hamersly 1902, p. 13
  6. ^ Register of Officers 1884–1977. The United States Naval War College. 1977. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
  7. ^ Nofi 1996, pp. 67–68, 78–82, 84–89, 187.
  8. ^ Graham, George Edward, and Winfield Scott Schley, Schley and Santiago, Chicago: W. B. Conkey Company, 1902, pp. 458–460 Retrieved 25 July 2020.
  9. ^ "Naval History and Heritage Command, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Massachusetts IV". Archived from the original on 2020-02-27. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g Tucker 2009, p. 284
  11. ^ American Biographical Directories: District of Columbia, 1908–1909, Washington, D.C.: The Potomac Press, 1908, p. 284.
  12. ^ a b "F. J. Higginson Dies; Was Rear Admiral: Retired Naval Officer Succumbs in Sleep at 88—Fought in Two Wars" (PDF). The New York Times. September 13, 1931. p. 65. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
  13. ^ "Mrs. F. J. Higginson: Admiral's Widow Was Member of Colonial Family—Dies at 84" (PDF). The New York Times. May 23, 1938. p. 17. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
  14. ^ Anonymous, "Sampson Memorial Window," The Navy, December 1908, p. 20.
  15. ^ "navalorder.org Naval Order of the United States: About the Order". Archived from the original on 2015-02-15. Retrieved 2015-02-15.
  16. ^ Anonymous, "Rear Admiral Higginson, Civil War Hero, Dies," The Lewiston Daily, September 14, 1931.
  17. ^ "Higginson, Francis J". ANC Explorer. Retrieved 2022-02-04.

References

External links
Military offices
Preceded by Commander-in-Chief, North Atlantic Squadron
May 1, 1901 – December 29, 1902 		Succeeded by
none
Preceded by
none
 Commander-in-Chief,
North Atlantic Fleet

December 29, 1902 – July 1903 		Succeeded by
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