Muscogee County GaArchives Biographies.....John Matthews September 18 1846 - Unknown
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Carla Miles captbluegrass@mchsi.com July 23, 2003, 8:01 pm

Author: Memoirs of Ga., Vol. II, 1895

Memoirs of Georgia, Vol. II, Atlanta, Ga.
Published by the Atlanta Historical Society in 1895
Pages 622-623


John Smith Matthews, city treasurer of Columbus, Ga., was born in Chambers 
County, Ala. Sept. 18, 1846, and resided there until the age of twenty-two.  
He is one of two sons of Ralph Matthews, who was born in Wilkes County, Ga., 
in 1808, and died in Opelika, Ala., in February 1871.  He was a farmer all his 
life.  The brother of John S. Matthews is William H., who was in the 
Fourteenth Alabama Regiment, C.S.A., and served throughout the late civil 
war.  He is now a resident of Wooley, Ark.  John Smith Matthews, the gentleman 
whose name heads this article, was educated in the private schools of Chambers 
County, Ala., and farmed on the estate of his father until January, 1864, when 
he enlisted in Bonand’s Battalion of Artillery, which battalion was afterward 
consolidated with the First Alabama Regiment.  Mr. Matthews went in as a 
private and served until the surrender of Gen. Johnston at Greensboro, N.C.   
He was in the battle of Olustee, and at the siege of Charleston, S.C., and 
then at Averasboro and Bentonville, N.C.  After the war he returned to his 
home and attended school for a time.  In October 1868, he came to Columbus and 
entered the cotton firm of Allen, Preer & Illges as a clerk, remaining with 
them three years.  He then began to buy cotton on his own account and carried 
on that business until 1878, when he formed a partnership with E.D. Swift 
under the firm name of Swift & Co., which business was continued until 1885.  
Mr. Matthews conducted the cotton business alone from September 1885, until 
January 1887, when he accepted a position in the Columbus Post Office as 
registry clerk, serving in that capacity until August 1888.  He then entered 
the employ of J.R. Holts & Co., cotton factors, and remained with them until 
September 1889, at which time he was elected city treasurer and has been re-
elected every year since that time.  Mr. Matthews is a member of the Improved 
Order of Red Men and is the keeper of wampum of Pawnee tribe No. 27.  He is a 
steward of St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church South, of Columbus, and also 
a teacher in its Sunday school.  He was married June 4, 1872, to Miss Mary F., 
daughter of the late Isaac McFarland, a prominent planter of Harris County, 
Ga., and this union has been blessed by the birth of two children: Mary, wife 
of Hayward J. Pearce, of Gainesville, Ga. and Ralph.



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