EDWARD LEA, LCDR, USN

Edward Lea '55

Date of birth: January 31, 1837

Age: 25

Loss

Edward was killed in action on January 1, 1863 when his ship, USS Harriet Lane (1857) was captured in Galveston Harbor.

Other Information

Lea was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Army engineer Albert Miller Lea and Ellen Shoemaker. He entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis on October 2, 1851, graduating on June 9, 1855, with the rank of midshipman. Lea was employed in active service on various stations, receiving promotion to passed midshipman on April 15, 1858, to master on November 4, 1858, to lieutenant on November 22, 1860, and to Lieutenant Commander on 16 July, 1862.
Lea was serving aboard the Hartford, flagship of the East India Squadron, when the Civil War broke out in 1861. The ship was recalled, eventually arriving in Delaware Bay in December. Lea was soon reassigned to the Harriet Lane, then attached to the Potomac Flotilla, but was soon reassigned in her to the Gulf Blockading Squadron, where he took part in operations leading to the capture of New Orleans in April 1862. Lea was subsequently promoted to lieutenant commander on July 16, 1862. Harriet Lane pushed further up the Mississippi that July to engage enemy batteries around Vicksburg, and was then assigned to the blockade of Galveston, which she helped capture in October 1862 in the Battle of Galveston Harbor.
When Confederate forces retook Galveston on 1 January 1863, Lea, serving as the first officer (executive officer) of Harriet Lane, was wounded in the abdomen and side. He subsequently succumbed to his wounds in the arms of his father, who was serving as a major of artillery in the Confederate Army, and who had witnessed the capture of the Harriet Lane by the gunboat CS Bayou City from shore, and had rushed to the ship to find his son dying.
Lea and his captain, Jonathan M. Wainwright were buried together at the Trinity Episcopal Cemetery in Galveston. After the war Wainwright was re-interred at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, but when a relative suggested that Lea's remains be reburied next to his mother in the Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Albert Lea refused, stating that his son would have preferred to remain where he had fallen in battle.

From Find A Grave:

Edward Lea was an 1855 graduate of the US Naval Academy and rose to the rank of Lt. Comdr. His father, Albert Lea (namesake of the Minnesota city) was a US Military Academy graduate and engineer. When Civil War began, Albert joined the Confederacy while Edward remained in the US Navy. A family schism ensued and neither had contact until a fateful reunion at the Battle of Galveston, Texas. Lea's ship, the Harriet Lane, was at Galveston to occupy the city. Confederates under Gen. J.B. Magruder attacked the Federals on January 1, 1863 and defeated them. Ironically, Albert Lea was serving on Magruder's staff while Edward was executive officer on the Lane under Capt. J.M. Wainwright. During the battle, both Edward Lea and Wainwright were casualties. Albert Lea boarded the Lane and found his son Edward mortally wounded. After a brief reconciliation, Albert left to find medical help. As Edward lay dying, his only words were "My father is here." After the battle, Magruder authorized Albert Lea to hold a funeral including both Union and Confederate personnel. Edward Lea, along with Wainwright, was buried with military honors in Galveston. Lea's tombstone bears his final words, "My father is here."

The below was located by researcher Kathy Franz. It is from Edward's father's (Albert's) published family biography in the Freeborn County Standard, Minnesota, March 13, 1879. Note that Albert wrote the biography from the third-person point of view.

"After marriage, took his bride by Niagara and the lakes to Chicago, and then to Galena by stage, being a common farm wagon without springs, trunks being used for seats. After setting up her brother as military storekeeper at Rock Island, they went to the mouth of Pine river. And there he found a log cabin used as a stable as the best accommodation for his delicate wife. He surveyed and named the town Ellenborough.
He took his wife by St. Louis and Cincinnati, making brief sojourns in each, to Baltimore, having on the way received a tender of the chief engineership of the State of Tennessee, a coveted position deferred to a higher duty to his young wife, who bore him, January 31, 1837, her only son.
After surveying a route for a central railroad and for a central turnpike from the Mississippi river to the Virginia line, he drew up the drawings and report at his old home where his mother still resided, and where he was joined by his brave and beautiful wife, who had journeyed six hundred miles by stage with her infant."
After delivering his report to the Governor, he “carried his family through the snows and rough ways across Cumberland mountain in December, and leaving them in the care of his younger brother” Luke, then secretary of state.
While he was on another boundary survey, his “wife was prostrated by hemorrhage of the lungs, precursor of phthisis pulmonalis, of which she died in the winter of 1839-40.”
Edward was left with his aunt Ann Caroline, Mrs. James Lloyd Tilghman, at Fountain Rock, near Hagerstown. His father joined them in the summer of 1842 and assisted in the opening of the College of St. James. He then “returned to his home to take care of his lonely and aged mother, and in 1844 accepted a tender of the professorship of mathematics in the East Tennessee University at Knoxville.” Here he met his second wife, Catharine Sarah Davey Heath.
“His first wife was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church at her marriage. At the birth of his son, the question of baptism arose, and forced him to examine the whole matter . . . although his father, as well as his grandfather, was a Baptist preacher, and he was brought up in that creed, he was baptized in St. Paul's publicly, and was a few months after confirmed by Bishop Otey at Nashville, Tenn.” Albert left the university in 1851.
In the autumn of 1862, “he was left at Knoxville to quiet Union men during this movement towards the Ohio, and soon after was ordered to report to Gen. H. P. Bee at San Antonio, whither he was going, when at Houston he learned that Magruder had gone down to capture Galveston, where he reported at dusk to Magruder, whom he had not met for thirty-three years. He had heard that his son, Edward, was first officer of the steam sloop of war Harriet Lane, under Capt. Wainwright, and that she was the chief object of attack. Learning that the design was to board the vessels in the harbor from light river boats with barricades of cotton bales, and knowing that the officers of the ships would do the work of brave men, he expected all to be killed or wounded by the wild Texans as boarders with shotguns and revolvers, and joined the attacking forces that he might reach his son, as soon as possible, during or after the fight. He marched afoot all night, and was assigned to duty as lookout from a high house near headquarters, and soon after the attack began, just at daylight, he reported to Magruder that the Lane had probably captured the Bayou City (gun boat), as the two seemed to be lashed together, it not occurring to him that possibly the fact might be the reverse but so it was, as a note from Brig. Gen. Scurry just then announced, with a truce till 10 A. M., when the federals had the option of surrender on generous terms or to renew the battle. He asked leave to board the Lane, and there
“FOUND HIS SON MORTALLY WOUNDED
“but lying on the locker of the cockpit, shot through the middle of the abdomen, his thoughts turned to his men, whose command had devolved on him by the death of his captain, and he asked his father to arrange with Magruder that the wounded should be sent to New Orleans by sea, to save the suffering of going by land to the interior, as prisoners. When told of the terms of the truce, his chagrin was deep. The father went to confer with the general, then near the Lane, and just then all the ships, about sunrise, with the white flag of truce flying from each, steamed away towards the commodore's ship, which, having run aground, in the fright, was abandoned and blown up, the commodore, Renslau [Renshaw,] being accidentally still aboard. This is the simple truth in this regard. But another fact on the other side little known is, that
“THE CONFEDERATES WERE BADLY WHIPPED,
“when the Lane was captured by the merest accident, the running of the bowsprit of the gunboat between the spokes of the wheel of the Lane. This accident changed the whole face of the affair, converting a rash enterprise, justly followed by defeat, into a renowned victory.
“The officers of the Lane and of a battalion from Boston, were left at liberty on the Island, and the next day joined the confederates in doing honor to their late comrades, to whom the chivalrous Magruder accorded a fitting funeral, in which the Masonic brethren of both armies joined in the procession and services for their deceased brother, Wainwright, and the burial service of the Episcopal church was said for them both together, by the father of Lieut. Commander Lea.
“This incident of the capture of Galveston is thus briefly noted, being forced on the mind of the writer by the fact that he has reached this point in his narrative at the very hour, when sixteen years ago, he was engaged in the affair.”
In June 1865, Albert took his family “to Galveston to make it his home, drawn thither by the grave of his son, who still lies there
"In sight of the sea, in sound of the wave."
Albert opened “a little book store which was closed with loss owing to the detention of remittances by interrupted mails . . .” Later, Albert purchased family land in Corsicana, Texas, and moved his family there. He died in 1891.
Edward's mother was Ellen (Shoemaker). She married Albert on May 5, 1836, in Baltimore. Her sister Ann Caroline married James Lloyd Tilghman of Fountain Rock. Fountain Rock was a 17,000-acre plantation. Their son Brigadier General Lloyd James Tilghman named his daughter Ellen Lea Tilghman.
Edward's father Albert Miller Lea married Catharine Heath in Baltimore on September 29, 1845. They had three children: Alexander McKenn, Eliza, and Albert. Edward's grandfather was Major Lea, Jr. (1775-1821).

He was appointed to the Naval Academy from Ohio. He is listed on the killed in action panel in the front of Memorial Hall, and is buried in Galveston, Texas.

Remembrances

From The New York Times on February 8, 1863:

Lieut Commander EDWARD LEA was born in the City of Baltimore, on the 30th day of January, 1838. His father, Gen. ALBERT M. LEA, graduated in the Topographical Engineers at West Point, and his mother was a grand-daughter of SAMUEL SHOEMAKER, Esq., Mayor of Philadelphia before the formation of the Government. Having conceived a fondness for the Navy, EDWARD LEA entered the Academy at Annapolis in 1851, and graduated therefrom June 9, 1855.
From this time until the day of his decease he was employed in active service upon various stations, having passed rapidly through the several grades of Master and Lieutenant to that of Lieutenant-Commander, to which position he was commissioned July 16, 1862, not quite eleven years from the date of his entry into the service.
Upon the breaking out of the rebellion he was master on board the frigate Hartford, then the flag ship of the East India squadron, which vessel was recalled shortly afterwards by command of the Department. Upon her arrival in Delaware Bay, all the officers attached to the ship were required, before landing, to take the oath of allegiance, and to his lasting honor, be it known, that of six then present he was one of two who went manfully forward and subscribed his name in full, remarking afterwards that when it was proposed he "gave one glance at the old flag flying at the peak," and obeyed its silent, though patriotic summons.
Shortly after this he was assigned to the Harriet Lane, then attached to the Potomac flotilla, from whence, running the blockade gauntlet with the Pensacola, he was ordered with his vessel to the Gulf, where he took quite a conspicuous part in the bombardment and capture of Forts St. Philip and Jackson and the City of New-Orleans.
From this scene of active operations he was ordered to the blockade off Pensacola, and thence to Galveston, where, after a most gallant and heroic defense, fighting his vessel to the very end against the enemies of his country, he fell overpowered, on the 1st of January, breathing his last upon the deck of the vessel he had so long defended.
We might well pause here and point with pride to the undimmed record of his faithful career in the public service as the most imperishable monument to his worth and gallantry, but our admiration of his many virtues and exalted patriotism, tempts us to add, that in all the higher qualities which adorn the Christian and ennoble man, EDWARD LEA stood foremost! Of a warm and impulsive nature -- a generous, noble-hearted disposition, a devoted son and a faithful friend, his memory will ever be cherished by those who met him in the private walks of life, as it must be honored by his companions in the service. Early impressed with the truth of the saying, "it is man's highest glory to be good." he became a devoted and consistent member of the church in his fourteenth year, from which time he walked steadfastly to the end, never swerving from the chosen path of rectitude and fulfilling every Christian obligation with a zeal and devotion worthy of example to the world.

Career

From the Naval History and Heritage Command:

Acting Midshipman, 2 October, 1851. Midshipman, 9 June, 1855. Passed Midshipman, 15 April, 1858. Master, 4 November, 1858. Lieutenant, 22 November, 1860. Lieutenant Commander, 16 July, 1862. Killed in battle 1 January, 1863.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.