SYDNEY A. SIMONS, LT, USN
Sydney Simons '67
Sydney Augustus Simons was admitted to the Naval Academy from Richmond, New York on September 22, 1863 at age 16 years 11 months.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1867 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1867 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Loss
Sydney was lost on November 24, 1877 when USS Huron (1875) went aground and then wrecked in heavy weather off Nags Head, North Carolina. Ninety-seven other officers and men were also lost.
Obituary
From Army & Navy Journal on December 1, 1877:
Lieutenant Simons was born and appointed from Richmond, Staten Island, N.Y. He entered the Academy on Sept. 22, 1863, and graduated in June, 1867, No. 5 in his class. He was promoted to lieutenant on March 21, 1871, and joined the Huron about three weeks ago. He was a fine officer, and one of the most promising young men in the Service.
Sydney is buried in New York; he was survived by his wife, Emma Polk, whom he married on July 9, 1873. She died in 1907.
Related Articles
George Ryan '61, Lambert Palmer '68, James Wight '71, Walter French '71, Frederick Danner '74, and Edmund Loomis '75 were also lost when Huron was wrecked.
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.
January 1864
January 1866
January 1869
January 1872
January 1873
January 1876
July 1877
Class of 1867 Etching Book
Midshipman Benjamin Park '67 created a book, "Shahings", that was a collection of etchings he created for his classmates. It is an interesting and entertaining collection. It is available at the University of California, and a copy is provided here.
Sydney is one of 5 members of the Class of 1867 on Virtual Memorial Hall.
The "category" links below lead to lists of related Honorees; use them to explore further the service and sacrifice of alumni in Memorial Hall.
