Existing comment:
Lieutenant Franklin Buchanan, USN (1800-1874)
by Marie Hildreth Meier, after Rembrandt Peale, 1919
Hung in the upper entrance foyer, this is a portrait of the first Superintendent of the Naval School in Annapolis, the namesake for the house. A native of Baltimore, Franklin Buchanan entered the Navy at 15. He later married Anne Catherine Lloyd, daughter of a governor of Maryland, and had a home across the street from the current main Chapel. On October 10, 1845, with a faculty and staff of seven and about fifty midshipmen, he formally opened the new school in Fort Severn, less than a block from his Annapolis home. In 1847, he was reassigned to help fight the Mexican War. He served in Perry's Expedition to Japan; and he was commanding the Washington Navy Yard when the Civil War began. Captain Buchanan resigned his commission, went to Richmond, and joined the Confederate States Navy. He was the first commander of CSS Virginia ex-USS Merrimack, the first ironclad ship, and he commanded the Confederate naval forces in the Battle of Mobile Bay. He was twice wounded. After the war he served as a President of the University of Maryland. The portrait, originally painted for the wardroom of USS Buchanan (DD 131) in 1919, was removed and transferred to the Naval Academy when the ship went into reserve in 1922. |