Lawrence Rousseau: Also Was an Officer In Confederate States Navy

While researching an event for my Civil War Navy blog, Running the Blockade, I came across the name of a Confederate officer sent to New Orleans on March 17, 1861, to look into purchasing gunboats for the new Confederate Navy.  He was Lawrence Rousseau.

I'd never heard of his name so did further research and when I saw he was born July 15, 1790, I was thinking that would have made him quite old by the time of the Civil War.  That date also would have made him old enough to have been in the War of 1812.

He was commissioned as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy on January 16, 1809.  During the War of 1812 he was commissioned a lieutenant on July 14, 1813 and on the sloop of war USS Erie, blockaded by the British at the port of Baltimore, and then the brig USS Jefferson on Lake Ontario.

--Brock-Perry