The following is an article about Admiral Charles Stanhope Cotton, a cousin of Abbie Cotton Jameson. No date or publication is on the article.

Admiral Cotton, Grandson of an early Buffalonian

Admiral Charles Stanhope Cotton, who is performing the most conspicuous duty of any American naval office this year, as the commander of the United States squadron visiting Kiel and Southampton, is an officer in whom Buffalonians should take particular interest: for he descends from an old Buffalo family.

Admiral Cotton's grandfather was Rowland Cotton, who received a commission as captain in the militia of Montgomery County from Governor George Clinton in 1793, and who moved to Buffalo in 1806. He settled on Buffalo Plains, where his farm adjoined that of Colonel William Chapin. It was along the line of their boundary fence that he and Colonel Chapin buried the bodies of the soldiers of the War of 1812, in the grave since suitably marked. Rowland Cotton had a son named Lester Hope Cotton, and his son commanded vessels on the lakes for many years. Among Lester Hope Cotton's vessels was the steamer Western World, plying between Buffalo and Chicago.

The family left Buffalo about 1836 and the Admiral Cotton of today was born in Milwaukee in 1843. He went to the Naval Academy from Milwaukee. He was on the frigate Minnesota in Hampton Roads when the Merrimac attacked her after destroying the Congress and the Cumberland; and the next day he saw the Monitor and Merrimac fight their drawn battle. He served under Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay. In the '80s he was the commander of the old Monocacy when that vessel helped to open treaty relations between Corea [sic] and this country, and his ship was the first to salute the then new national flag of Corea. In the Spanish War, Captain Cotton commanded the Harvard, and he it was that sent the first official dispatch notifying the Navy Department of the arrival of Cervera off Martinique. Later it was the Harvard that helped to pick up the wrecked crews of Cervera's ships, after Sampson's fleet had destroyed the Spanish squadron; and the Harvard brought the Spanish prisoners north to Annapolis and Portsmouth.

Admiral Cotton's mother died when he was little more than a baby, and he was brought up in a family of cousins, almost as a brother to the other children. Two of these cousins live in Buffalo today -- Mrs. Mary A. Chase and Mrs. Helen C. Stone of No. 274 Richmond Avenue. A son of Mrs. Stone, Edward Cotton Stone, was a soldier in the Spanish War and the Philippines; and so two descendants of Rowland Cotton served their country in that war.

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