Felix senac

Felix Senac (1815–1866) was an American paymaster in the US Navy and later a Confederate agent working in Europe for the Confederate Navy.A native of Pensacola, he married in Mobile and moved his family to Key West just prior to the Civil War.In 1861 he tendered his resignation as Paymaster of the USS Susquehanna while the vessel was still in La Spezia, Italy.He would be paymaster of the Confederate Navy in Europe until the end of the Civil War.He died in 1866 while in Wiesbaden, Germany.His daughter Ruby Angela married the famous Confederate propagandist Henry Hotze in 1867 in Paris.Felix Senac is related by marriage to Stephen Mallory, Confederate Secretary of the Navy, and to Confederate soldier John L. Rapier.In a letter to the Confederate agent James Dunwoody Bulloch, Secretary Stephen Mallory describes him thus: "He speaks French with purity and elegance, Spanish also, possesses fine business capacity, and is a gentleman of ripe judgement and rare merit".

Felix Senac was born in 1815 in Pensacola (then Spanish Empire) of French parents from New Orleans.In 1821, Florida became a US territory and he subsequently became a US citizen.His cousin Angela Moreno of Spanish descent, also born in 1815 in Pensacola, would later marry in 1838 Stephen Mallory, the future Confederate Secretary of the Navy.In 1841, Felix Senac married Marie Louise Hollinger in Mobile, Alabama while serving as Deputy Postmaster in that city.Their only daughter Ruby Angela would be born four years later in 1845.In 1852, Felix Senac moved his family to Key West while overseeing the construction of Fort Taylor.In 1856 he was appointed purser in the US Navy and moved his family to Washington, DC.His daughter Ruby was a student at Georgetown Visitation school for girls.In 1857 he travelled south to Panama (Central America) to meet the USS Decatur as its purser.In 1860 he would be purser to the USS Seminole and USS Richmond.In 1860 the US Congress would change the title of purser to paymaster.While on board the USS Susquehanna in Italy, Felix Senac heard of Florida and Alabama's secession and resigned on April 1, 1861 while in La Spezia, Italy.

On June 6, 1861 he arrived in Boston and settled his accounts with the US Navy while in Washington.By August 1861 he had officially settled all his accounts with the US Navy and bade farewell to the Union, meeting his wife and daughter in Winchester, Kentucky.His family relations through his cousin Angela Mallory, married to the Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, had secured for Felix Senac appointments with the nascent Confederate Navy on 22 July 1861.

By September 1861, Felix Senac had been appointed paymaster of the CSS Mississippi and CSS Louisiana, both being built in shipyards outside New Orleans. He was living with his family in New Orleans when the city fell to Union forces on 26 April 1862.The family had secured access to flee New Orleans and were living with other members of their family in Covington, Georgia.On 15 September 1862, Senac was summoned to Richmond in front of a Congressional Committee to explain the reasons for the loss of the two Confederate ironclads.Having received new instructions to operate as the Confederate Navy's paymaster in Europe, Felix Senac and his family left Wilmington, NC in June of 1863.Having reached London, the family ultimately settled in Paris as Felix Senac traveled to England and around Europe trying to secure clothing, shoes, and weapons for the Confederacy.His ultimate goal had been to supervise and pay for the construction of the CSS Sphinx and the CSS Cheops.These ironclads had been given Egyptian names in the hope that US spies would believe the ironclads were destined for the Khedive of Egypt. On 28 February 1865, as Confederate agents in Europe were slowly preparing to make their way back to the Confederacy, Felix Senac received orders from Richmond to stay in Paris.In the summer of 1865 he moved with his family to Wiesbaden in Germany and wrote his nephew that he would be traveling to South America to start a new life there.Felix Senac died a few months later on 27 January 1866 in Wiesbaden and is buried there.

His wife and daughter Ruby left Germany for Paris where Ruby married the Confederate propagandist Henry Hotze in Paris in 1867.Following Hotze's death in 1887, Ruby survived her husband by several decades.She continued to live in England and then moved to Washington, D.C. with her mother Marie Louise who died on 2 October 1898.Ruby was employed in the Census Office on July 1, 1890 and then became a clerk in the Signal Corps.She was transferred to the Weather Bureau in 1891. She died on January 3, 1929 in Washington, D.C. at the age of 84.She is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.