Adolphus Staton – Rear Admiral, United States Navy

Born in Tarboro, North Carolina, on August 28, 1879. He was a student at the Virginia Military Institute in 1896-97, the University of North Carolina in 1897-98 and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1902.

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He also received a LL.B degree from George Washington University Law School in 1917, and graduated from the Naval War College in 1921 and the Army War College in 1932. He served on various ships during World War I, but was most famous in the Navy for his actions in Mexico in 1915, where he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and other awards. Following his naval service, he was Vice President of Falkland Real Estate in Maryland.

He died on June 4, 1964 and was buried in Section 4 of Arlington National Cemetery.


STATON, ADOLPHUS

Rank and organization: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Vera Cruz, Mexico, 22 April 1914. Entered service at: North Carolina. Born: 28 August 1879, Tarboro, North Carolina.

Citation:

For distinguished conduct in battle, engagement of Vera Cruz, 22 April 1914; was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion. He exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through the action of the 22d and in the final occupation of the city.

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ADOLPHUS STATON, RETIRED ADMIRAL

Medal of Honor Winner for Vera Cruz Landing Dies

WASHINGTON, June 5, 1964 – Rear Admiral Adolphus Staton, USN, retired, a holder of the Medal of Honor, died yesterday at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  He was 84 years old.

Admiral Staton, who was appointed to the United States Naval Academy from Tarboro, North Carolina, graduated with the class of 1902.  He received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry in the landing at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1914.  During World War I, as executive officer of the Mount Vernon, he was awarded the Navy Cross for his work in saving the ship when it was torpedoed.

He served in the China station as assistant director of Naval Intelligence.  He attended the Navy and Army War Colleges and was on the staff of the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Admiral Staton’s last command was the battleship Nevada.  When he retired in 1937, h became active in real estate and was president of the Silver Spring, Maryland, and Rotary Club.  During World War II he was recalled to active duty on the staff of the Under Secretary of the Navy and headed a board administering the removal of subversives’ who were radio operators aboard ships.

Admiral Staton was a governor of the Chevy Chase Club, a founding member of the Amy-Navy Country Club, a member of the Alfalfa Clun, a board member of the Boys Club of Greater Washington and a director of Moral Rearmament.

Surviving are his widow, Edith Blair Staton of Chevy Chase; a daughter, Mrs. Bernard McCabe of Waban, Massachusetts, and seven grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at the Fort Myer, Virginia, Chapel on Monday at 10 A.M., with burial in Arlington National Cemetery.


Edith Staton Dies; Blair Descendant

Wednesday, July 4, 2001

Edith Blair Staton, 104, a descendant of a prominent political family who did volunteer and charitable work in the Washington area until moving to Massachusetts in 1972, died of a kidney ailment June 30, 2001 at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mrs. Staton was credited with being the last of the Blairs to have been born at Blair House, the stately structure across from the White House that since the 1940s has been used as a guest house for kings, prime ministers and other dignitaries.

Her great-grandfather, Francis Preston Blair, edited the Washington Globe, which is said to have been the forerunner of the Congressional Record. Her grandfather, Montgomery Blair, was counsel for the runaway slave in the Dred Scott case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Her father, Montgomery Blair Jr., was a well-known lawyer in his own right.

Her mother, Edith Draper Blair, was the daughter of Massachusetts Gov. Eben Sumner Draper and co-founder of the Potomac School in Washington. Mrs. Staton was among the first to graduate from the school, which is now in McLean.

Mrs. Staton did volunteer work in hospitals during World War I. In the early 1920s, she chaired an education subcommittee of the Girl Scouts of the United States that developed the official Brownies program. A grass-roots Brownies program had been in existence since the mid-1910s.

Throughout her life, Mrs. Staton donated Thomas Sully portraits to government agencies. In the 1950s and 1960s, she counseled pregnant teenagers in Washington.

When she was 102, she visited an elementary school near Boston and answered students' questions about longevity. “I recommend you take plenty of exercise and don't eat too much candy between meals,” she told them.

In 1917, she married Adolphus Staton, who retired as a Navy rear admiral and held the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He died in 1964.

Her daughter, Lucy McCabe, died of cancer in 1973.

Survivors include eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

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