A biography of Stephen Decatur (1779-1820)

He was kind, warm-hearted, unassuming,
gentle and hospitable, beloved in social life
and with a soul totally and utterly devoted to his country.

 - John Quincy Adams



Stephen Decatur was born in a two-room cabin in Sinnepuxent, Md., Jan. 5, 1779, where his mother, Anne Pine Decatur, had fled after General Howe captured Philadelphia in 1777-1778.
His father, also Stephen Decatur (June 1752 – 11 November 1808), a native of Newport, R.I., and son of a French immigrant from Rochelle, commanded the Royal Lewis, the Comet, the Retaliation, the Rising Sun, and the Fair American during the Revolutionary War.
Decatur Sr. married Ann Pine at St. Peter’s on December 20, 1774. He is buried in the St. Peter’s Churchyard near his son's grave, as are his wife; two children, John and Elizabeth; another daughter, Ann; her husband, Dr. William Hurst, and one of their children, Catherine Louisa.
Another son, James, was killed in battle commanding a gunboat in Captain Edward Preble's squadron in 1804 during the Tripoli campaign. James Decatur entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1798, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1802. He was struck by a musketball as he prepared to board an enemy ship on Aug. 3, 1804. He was buried at sea.

The family moved back to Philadelphia when the British evacuated the capital a few months after Stephen’s birth. They lived at what is now 310 South Front Street. The house is gone, but a sign marks the spot. Young Stephen attended the Protestant Episcopal Academy and studied with the Rev. James Abercrombie, assistant minister of Christ and St. Peter's Church (Decatur’s mother wanted him to be a minister). He also had made a voyage with his father in 1787.

He enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, but left at 17 to work as a clerk with his father at the counting-house of Navy agents Gurney & Smith (the elder Decatur later was a co-owner; Francis Gurney was master of the Southwark port who had invested in the elder Decatur’s ships) and aided in securing timber in New Jersey for the keel of the frigate USS United States.

The senior Decatur left the Navy in 1801 when it was reduced by act of Congress following the end of the French war. He went into business and in 1807, he built a sawmill, grist mill and powder mill on Frankford Creek in the Borough of Frankford. Decatur also built a fine house on the Northern Liberties side of the creek.

Young Stephen was appointed a midshipman through the efforts of Commodore John Barry, April 30, 1798; lieutenant, May 21, 1799 (right) ; captain 16 February 1804. He served as midshipman on the USS United States, commanded by Barry, in 1798-1799, during the “Quasi-War” with France.
Then came the war with Tripoli in 1803-1804. On Dec. 23, 1803, Enterprise and the frigate USS Constitution captured the Tripolitan ketch Mastico after a sharp fight. Renamed Intrepid, the ketch was given to Decatur for use in a daring raid to destroy the frigate USS Philadelphia which had run aground and been captured in Tripoli harbor in October. At 7 p.m., Feb. 16, 1804, Intrepid, disguised as a Maltese merchant ship and flying British colors, entered Tripoli harbor. Claiming that they had lost their anchors in a storm, Decatur asked permission to tie up alongside the captured frigate.

As the two ships touched, Decatur stormed aboard Philadelphia with 60 men. Fighting with swords and pikes, they took control of the ship and began preparations to burn it. With combustibles in place, Philadelphia was set on fire. Waiting until he was sure the fire had taken hold, Decatur was the last to leave the burning ship.
Escaping in Intrepid, Decatur and his men successfully evaded fire from the harbor's defenses and reached the open sea. As a result, he was appointed a captain, the youngest to date, at 25.

Decatur married Susan Wheeler in March 1806. Born in 1776, Susan was a native of Norfolk, Va., where her father served as mayor. She was said to be well educated and charming. "A pretty girl but not a beauty," one observer wrote. Her portrait shows a slight, fair-skinned woman with light brown eyes, rosy cheeks and a hint of dimples.” Susan endured his long absences at sea. When he died at 41, they had been married for 14 years and were childless.

In the War of 1812, Decatur was distinguished for the capture of the HMS Macedonian on Oct. 12, 1812; he commanded the USS United States at this time. In spring 1814, he commanded the President and a squadron of three vessels, in the West Indies and flew the pennant of commodore. On Jan. 15, 1815, the USS President had a severe engagement with the British West India Squadron, and surrendered after having lost a quarter of her crew and being surrounded by three frigates. Decatur was made prisoner, taken to Bermuda, and from there sent to New London, Conn., on parole on the British frigate HMS Narcissus.

After peace was signed with Great Britain, Decatur commanded the U.S. Mediterranean Squadron and secured the final treaty of peace with the Barbary Powers. During his successful negotiations with the Barbary pirates, he utter the often misquoted “To our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong!”
From 1816 to 1820, he served on the Navy Board of Commissioners. He used the prize money he received for his capture of enemy ships to build a house on Lafayette Square in Washington (Decatur House 1818, designed by Benjamin Latrobe). He also received the thanks of Congress and a sword for his service before Tripoli and a gold medal for distinguished service in the War of 1812.

On March 22, 1820, Decatur fought a pistol duel at the Bladensburg, Md., Dueling Field with Commodore James Barron. Decatur had served under then-captain Barron as a lieutenant on the frigate New York on a tribute-paying voyage to the Bey of Algiers in 1802. Barron had been court-martialed for surrendering his ship, the Chesapeake, to British man-of-war HMS Leopard in 1807, which was one of the the major events leading to the War of 1812. When Barron returned to the United States after the war, he had intentions of resuming his naval service but met much criticism, especially from Decatur, a member of his court-martial board.
Barron was severely wounded in his hip but fired the shot that struck Decatur's abdomen. He traveled to Philadelphia and treated by Dr. Philip Syng Physick at his house at Fourth and Delancey Streets. He recovered, but spent the remainder of his life in ignominy for killing Decatur, even though he was reinstated in 1824.
Decatur was taken to his house in Lafayette Square. “Lying on a couch, he refused to see his anxious Susan, because he couldn’t bear to witness her suffering. As the hours dragged by, he remarked he did not think it possible to bear so much pain, but never once cried out.” Later, he said he would not mind death if it had come on the quarterdeck. “If it were the cause of my country, it would be nothing.” Weakly, he thanked the friends who anxiously waited around him, but told his father-in-law, whom he had summoned earlier in the week, “You can do me no service; go to my wife and do what you can to console her.” He died at 10:30 p.m.

About 10,000 people, including President James Monroe, former President James Madison, most of the Congress and the Supreme Court attended his funeral on March 23. His remains were placed in the tomb built for Joel Barlow (1754-1812), the politician and poet (one of the so-called “Hartford Wits,”) at Kalorama, in Washington, an estate Barlow had purchased in 1805. Barlow, minister to France, died and was buried in a Polish churchyard in 1812 while attempting to reach Napoleon as his army headed into Russia.
When Kalorama was sold by Barlow’s heirs in 1844, “it was deemed advisable that the remains be removed to Philadelphia and placed at the side of his father's and mother's graves in St. Peter's Churchyard,” according to Decatur’s biographer, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, (The Life of Stephen Decatur, a Commodore in the Navy of the United States, 1846). Susan Decatur assented to this after receiving a formal request from St. Peter’s vestry in 1844, since the tomb at Kalorama had fallen into disrepair. In October 1846, Decatur’s body was disinterred and brought by train to Baltimore and then by water to Philadelphia.
“On October 29th, 1846, this was done; there was an imposing military display and a very long procession under the command of Gen. Cadwallader, of the civic authorities and others. Three volleys of musketry were fired over the grave by the Wayne Artillery and Harrison Artillery, who were detailed for that purpose.”
“A handsome and noticeable monument was erected over the grave by his friends and fellow citizens of Philadelphia, consisting of a fluted granite column with Doric capital, surmounted by an eagle, the pedestal being composed of square blocks of granite, the whole forming a monument of about 20 feet in height.”

 (The original monument was defaced. The present one dates from 1899, according to vestry records researched by HSPCPC president David Richards. He notes that at the annual memorial service for Decatur in 1903, the City Troop was prohibited from entering the churchyard by the vestry because, on its last visit, a number of headstones had been toppled).

No official inquiry was made into Decatur’s death, which one congressman said happened “in violation of the laws of God and the nation.”

Five U.S. Navy ships have been named USS Decatur, 46 American communities, and numerous schools and highways have been named in his honor.
Susan Decatur, bitter and in financial straits, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1828. After she could no longer afford to live at the Lafayette Square house — first rented, then purchased as a tavern — she settled near the campus of what is now Georgetown University. She is said to have befriended students and faculty, and, in 1837, gave $7,000 to the struggling Roman Catholic college.

When she died on July 21, 1860, she was buried in the college's Old Burying Ground, which down through the years became overgrown and forgotten. In 1954, the cemetery was rediscovered by workers surveying for a college science building. Susan Decatur was moved to another college cemetery that "was neither particularly notable nor beautiful." It was from there that Georgetown, with the consent of descendants and the vestry of St. Peter's, moved her remains to Philadelphia on May 19, 1988, near her husband.

For many years, a memorial service for Decatur was held Feb. 16 at St. Peter's Church, featuring appearances by military personnel, and a city dignitary would speak. A luncheon would follow at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel at Chestnut and Ninth Streets. The last recorded service was in 1956, with the Rev. Francis Bayard Rhein, rector.


Sources: Brady, Stephen Decatur (1900); MacKenzie, The Life of Stephen Decatur (1846); Lewis, Charles Lee, The Romantic Decatur (1937); Hickman, War of 1812: Stephen Decatur; Ruane, Michael, Susan Decatur Joins Husband, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30, 1988; Minutes, St. Peter’s Vestry, February 1844; Stephen Decatur House Museum, Washington, D.C.; Naval Historical Center; 39 US 497 Susan Decatur v. James K. Paulding Secretary of the Navy, 1840 (pension controversy); Wilson, A Gallanter Fellow Never Stepped A Quarterdeck, Founders of America (2004); Todd, Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (2006).

A list of books about Stephen Decatur:

Robert J. Allison. Stephen Decatur: American Naval Hero, 1779-1820. University of Massachusetts Press.

2007. 253pp.

Leonard F. Guttridge. Our Country, Right Or Wrong: The Life of Stephen Decatur, the U.S. Navy's Most Illustrious Commander. Macmillan. 2007. 304pp.



James T. De Kay. A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN. Simon and Schuster. 2004. 237pp.

Charles L. Lewis. The Romantic Decatur. Ayer Publishing. 1937. 296pp.

Corinne Lowe. Knight of the Sea: The Story of Stephen Decatur. Harcourt, Brace. 1941. 286pp.

Alexander Slidell Mackenzie. Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1846. 443pp.



Spencer Tucker. Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring. Naval Institute Press. 2004. 245pp.

Samuel Putnam Waldo. The Life and Character of Stephen Decatur: Late Commodore and Post-Captain in the Navy of the United States, and Navy-Commissioner: Interspersed with Brief Notices of the Origin, Progress, and Achievements of the American Navy. Clark & Lyman. 1822. 378pp.