Background
Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright was born in New York City, the son of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright and Amelia Maria (Phelps) Wainwright.
Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright was born in New York City, the son of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright and Amelia Maria (Phelps) Wainwright.
He spent several months at the naval school at Philadelphia preliminary to an examination for passed midshipman, to which grade he was promoted from June 29, 1843.
On June 13, 1837, he was appointed midshipman and soon thereafter was ordered to the sloop Porpoise employed in the survey of harbors south of the Chesapeake. After a cruise in the East Indies on board the John Adams (1838 - 40), he was attached to the Macedonian and made a voyage to the West Indies.
A period of duty with the depot of charts and instruments in Washington was followed by a cruise in the East Indies on board the Columbia (1845 - 46). After promotion to a lieutenancy from September 17, 1850, he served in the Mediterranean on board the San Jacinto (1851 - 53). Duties at several receiving ships were interrupted in 1856-57 when he was with the Merrimack on special service and in 1858-59 when he was with the Saratoga of the Home Squadron. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was on waiting orders. His first active duty in the war was that of a lieutenant on board the Minnesota of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron, April-July 1861.
On January 18, 1862, he was given command of the Harriet Lane, the flagship of the mortar flotilla of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and a month later he seized, off the coast of Florida, the Confederate vessel Joanna Ward and sent her as a prize to New York. When on April 24 Farragut ran past Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the lower Mississippi, the mortar flotilla supported the movement. Wainwright took a position within five hundred yards of Fort Jackson and kept up a continuous fire. As commander of the flagship of the flotilla he had a prominent part in the operations of Commander David Dixon Porter that culminated in the surrender of the forts and the Confederate naval forces. He was commended by Porter for his coolness and bravery. In October with the Harriet Lane he participated in the capture of Galveston.
On January 1, 1863, when the Confederates recaptured this port his ship was attacked by the Bayou City and the Neptune, and was carried by boarding. Bravely fighting a superior force, Wainwright was killed instantly by a musket ball through the head after receiving three wounds in the head and three in the left thigh. He was buried at Galveston. After the war his body was sent to New York and was interred near that of his father in the cemetery of Trinity Church.
In December 1844 he was married to Maria Page of Clarke County, Virginia, who died on December 22, 1854. Together, they had four children.
