Background
John Walker Maury was born in Caroline County, Virginia in 1809 to a prominent Virginia family.
politician Mayor of the District of Columbia
John Walker Maury was born in Caroline County, Virginia in 1809 to a prominent Virginia family.
He served as the fifteenth Mayor of Washington, District of Columbia for one two-year term, from 1852 to 1854. His great-grandfather, Reverend James Maury, had founded the Maury Classical School for Boys at which Thomas Jefferson was his student for two years. He moved at 17 to Washington City (as the capital was then called), where he established a law practice.
At the age of only 26, the popular John Walker Maury was elected to the Washington Common Council, serving for five years until declining to run again in 1840.
However, one year afterward he was elected to the Board of Aldermen. He and the philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran convinced Congress to appropriate funds for the Government Hospital for the Insane, now known as Saint Elizabeths.
He also oversaw the start of construction of Washington"s public waterworks. Additionally, he appropriated the money to pay sculptor Clark Mills to complete the statue of Andrew Jackson that stands in Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House.
In 1854, at the peak of the Know-Nothing movement in American politics, Maury was unseated by Know-Nothing candidate John T. Towers.
He died one year later, shortly before his 46th birthday. He was interred at Congressional Cemetery in Washington. Maury Elementary School in Washington District of Columbia was named in honor of John Walker Maury who was the 14th Mayor of the city of Washington.