After extensive negotiations between the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the Salem Marine Society, the late Matthew Fontaine Maury has been rehabilitated into past membership. It has been a long road: Philip Chadwick Foster Smith brought up the idea at the annual [Salem Marine Society] meeting, as 18th- and 19th-century portraits of Marine Society members gazed down upon their descendants.
"The room instantaneously erupted into an uproar. Volatile expressions of indignant outrage. Sardonic laughter. Vitriolic explosions of wrath. Boos. Hisses. Bronx cheers," Smith wrote. "'No! No! No! Never! Let it stay that way!'"The motion died without a second.