EDWARD C. STOUT, LT, USN

Edward Stout '46

Date of birth: August 25, 1826

Age: 34

Loss

Edward Carpenter Stout was lost sometime after September 18, 1860, when USS Levant (1837) disappeared after leaving Hilo, Hawaii, for Panama.

Edward was born in New York, appointed to the Naval Academy from Iowa, but seems to have been a resident of New London, Connecticut. (He was married there and his daughter was born there in 1854.)

He was survived by his wife and daughter; Edward has a memory marker in Washington, D.C.

His wife, Julia, was daughter of Commodore John Aulick, a noted Naval Officer whose papers are in Nimitz Library at the Naval Academy.

Biography

From researcher Kathy Franz:

While in the Navy, Edward noted a couple of problems he had in his letters. He and Theodoric Lee, Class of 1847, were to go to Liverpool in 1851 on the private ship Baltic, but it was full of passengers. Captain Comstock was adamant about putting them off the ship even though by agreement with the Navy, the officers should be accommodated. The other problem he reported was while working in the National Observatory in 1858. A watchman, M. I. Laughlin, was cited for disrespect and neglect of duty. This had happened several times before. Edward was busy with the charts and had asked Laughlin to count blank receipts and then paste them into books. Laughlin said he had “enough of that type of work to do.”
Edward married classmate Richmond Aulick’s sister Julia on 2/1/1847. Daughter Mary was born in 1854, and Edward began a 50% allotment to his family in 1855. He changed it right before his death to $100/month. In 1860, Julia and her daughter lived with her father Commander John H. Aulick in Washington, D.C.

Career

From the Naval History and Heritage Command:

Midshipman, 18 February, 1840. Passed Midshipman, 11 July, 1846. Master, 6 October, 1854. Lieutenant, 4 June, 1855. Lost in Levant, 18 September, 1860.

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.