Skip to content

Obituary · primary-source record

Rear-Admiral, U.S. Navy Stephen Decatur Trenchard

1818, in Brooklyn – 1883 ("on Thursday night" shortly before the 17 November 1883 issue)

Died November 1883, New York City — U.S. Navy Rear-Admiral, veteran of forty-five years' service; New-York Tribune, 17 November 1883

Editorially verified

At-a-glance facts

Record type

Obituary

Date of death

1883 ("on Thursday night" shortly before the 17 November 1883 issue)

Date of birth

1818, in Brooklyn

Place of death

New York, United States

The obituary

Inscription transcription

New-York Tribune, November 17, 1883

OBITUARY.

REAR-ADMIRAL TRENCHARD.

The funeral of Rear-Admiral Stephen Decatur Trenchard, who died at his home in this city on Thursday night, will take place at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, in West Forty-sixth-st., on Monday morning. The pallbearers will be Admiral Le Roy, Commodore Ronckendorf, Captain Wiltse, and Medical Director Martin, all of the Navy, and four members of the Loyal Legion, of which organization Admiral Trenchard was one of the earliest members. The burial will take place at the cemetery of St. James the Less, in Philadelphia, where the body of the Admiral will be placed at rest beside that of his wife.

The death of Admiral Trenchard ends a career of unusual activity and usefulness. From 1834, when, at the age of sixteen, he received his appointment as midshipman, to 1880, when he was retired, having reached the age of sixty-two, he was almost continually employed. Of the forty-five years of his active service, twenty-eight years were spent on sea duty. The records of the Navy show only one other officer with more sea service to his credit. Admiral Trenchard was the son of Captain Edward Trenchard, one of Commodore Chauncey's commanders in the War of 1812. He was born in Brooklyn in 1818. His father named him Stephen Decatur, after the great commodore, under whose flag the elder Trenchard had sailed in the Mediterranean, and who was a life-long friend. On receiving his commission Stephen Decatur Trenchard reported for duty on board the receiving ship at the Navy Yard, [...]

Transcribed from two low-resolution clipping scans (300 px wide); the second clipping is cut off mid-sentence at the bottom, marked [...]. The pallbearer surname read here as "Ronckendorf" is unclear at this resolution. The funeral notice says only that he "died at his home in this city on Thursday night" — the exact death date is not stated in the clippings; the year 1883 is from the issue date and our archive's index entry ("1818~1883"), and "this city" is New York, the Tribune's city of publication.

People named in this record

  • Rear-Admiral, U.S. Navy Stephen Decatur TrenchardSubject
  • Admiral Le RoyMentioned
  • Commodore RonckendorfMentioned
  • Captain WiltseMentioned
  • Medical Director MartinMentioned
  • Captain Edward TrenchardParent
  • Commodore ChaunceyMentioned
  • Commodore Stephen DecaturMentioned

Record submitted by

From the Ancestors at Rest archive

Source & citation

Source type
Photograph & transcription
Provenance
From the Ancestors at Rest archive — founded 2004 by Brian and substantially built out across two decades by Lorine McGinnis Schulze of Olive Tree Genealogy.
Transcribed by
Ancestors at Rest archive — original contributor not recorded.
Last verified
2026-07-06
Permalink
/records/obituaries/trenchard-stephen-1883/
Image vs transcription
Two clipping scans from the New-York Tribune of 17 November 1883 — the funeral notice and an appreciation of his career — transcribed from the images; the scans are low resolution and the second clipping is cut off at the bottom

Citation: Obituary and funeral notice of Rear-Admiral Stephen Decatur Trenchard, U.S. Navy (1818–1883), from the New-York Tribune, 17 November 1883. Clipping scans preserved in the Ancestors at Rest archive. (https://ancestorsatrest.com/records/obituaries/trenchard-stephen-1883/ : accessed [your access date]).

More from the archive

Matched automatically from the archive’s name and place indexes — research leads, not confirmed relations.

Have a coffin plate, funeral card, or cemetery record?

The archive grows by contribution. If you have a transcription or photograph of a death record, share it and help another genealogist find their ancestor.

Submit a record →