John Henry Russell
United States Navy Rear Admiral

Rear Admiral John Henry Russell (4 July 1827 – 1 April 1897) was an officer of the United States Navy during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.
Biography
Russell was born at Frederick, Maryland on 4 July 1827 to Sir James Henry Russell and Martha Wilson Russell. He was appointed midshipman on 10 September 1841 and served aboard the sloop of war USS Cyane in the Pacific until 1843. He returned on the frigate United States in 1844 and then served aboard St. Mary's in the Gulf of Mexico from 1844 to 1846. He participated in operations at Galveston, Corpus Christi, Brazos, Resaca, and Vera Cruz.
After duty with Allegheny in 1847, he graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1848. Briefly assigned to United States Coast Survey duty, he made a cruise to Brazil in 1849, then served on the New York-West Indies mail line from 1853 to 1856, and served as navigator on Vincennes during explorations of the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron at the end of the decade, he returned to the United States and ordnance duty at the Washington Navy Yard just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War.
In April 1861, he assisted in preventing ships at Norfolk from falling to the enemy; and, in September, he led a boat expedition into Pensacola Harbor to destroy the Confederate privateer Judah.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Henry Russell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.