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- THE UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
ROBERT N. MATHEWS
ROCKFORD
ROBERT NELSON MATHEWS was a native of New York, and was born in Clinton county on the 5th of May, 1809. He was the son of John Mathews, a farmer and mechanic, who came from England, and settled near the line of New York and Canada.
Mr. Mathews spent his youth and early manhood at the east; married Miss Caroline A. Horr in 1834, and in that year settled in Kane county, Illinois, building the first frame house on the site of Aurora. He opened a farm, and continued in agricultural pursuits until 1846, when, having read law at Aurora, he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice at Little rock, Kendall county, continuing in his profession there for eight or nine years. His practice was extensive and profitable. During four years of his residence in Kendall county he served as county judge, an office for which his sound judgment and administrative talents admirably qualified him. In 1853 he was elected to the legislature, and was associated in that body with such men as John M. Palmer, S. M. Cullom and john A. Logan. Mr. Mathews introduced the first bill for the protection of wild game. About this time he became interested in government lands west of the Mississippi, particularly in Iowa and Nebraska, where he prospected considerably, making entries, and finally selecting his home at Rockford, on the beautiful Shellrock, where he settled on the 1st of January, 1857. Here for twenty years he toiled hard to build up a town, leading off in every enterprise which tended in that direction, up to the time of his death, which occurred on the 31st of May, 1877. Judge W. B. Fairfield, of Charles City, long an intimate friend, pronounced his funeral oration, and thus spoke of Mr. Mathews as a lawyer:
As a lawyer, Mr. Mathews was well read, thoroughly versed in its principles, clear in
his perception as to fact and law and the relation of one to the other, lucid in statement, logical in reasoning. Although he rarely in his later years conducted the trial of a cause in court, he frequently brought cases to the bar whose trial was intrusted to younger members of the profession. In all these cases, however, there was this that was noticeable-they were prepared. Not only was the law clearly defined and the authorities digested, but the preparation of the testimony in significance and sequence was masterly. The introduction of witnesses and testimony was so arrayed that as fact after fact and incident after incident was developed they constituted, in the simple order of array, an argument at once clear and logical. No man at the bar in this district understood better the value and weight of testimony.
The last eight or nine years of his life he was a banker, and was successful in this, as in every other enterprise in which he engaged. He left a large property in the village of Rockford, a farm of eleven hundred acres two miles south of town, another farm sixteen miles away in the edge of Franklin county, and other property scattered here and there.
Mr Mathews was elected one of the supervisors of Floyd County, when the law establishing such an office first went into operation, and while in that office was instrumental in freeing the county of very heavy obligations in the form of railroad bonds. He took pride in the accomplishment of this work, and the taxpayers felt that they owed him a heavy dept of gratitude.
In his orientation already referred to, Judge Fairfield thus spoke of the character of Mr. Mathews:
As a man, he was of large brain, large heart and generous impulses. He had a will that would have been imperious if there had not lain back of it a rare kindliness and a quick sympathy. Little children liked him, and dumb animals never feared him; both certain indices of a kindly and sympathetic nature. He was a man given to hospitality in its broadest sense, and while he was not inunificent in his giving, he was, according to his convictions of right, very generous. No person ever went hungering from his door, and the waif and wanderer found at his table food and under his roof shelter cheerfully and unquestioningly given. To the poor, and those who by force of untoward circumstances or of the chariness of nature had been placed in positions inferior to him, he was kind and gentle; to his equals courteous, though sometimes brusque; to his friend he was sincere, reliable, unswerving; toward those who disliked him he was independent and oftentimes defiant; as a neighbor, kind and obliging; as a creditor, lenient and forbearing, and as a counselor, shrewd and safe.
Mr. Mathews was in feeble health for two or three years before he died, and for five or six weeks took not enough food in the aggregate for an ordinary meal. How he could live as long as he did is a mystery even to the medical scientists. He was a member of the Masonic order, and was buried according to their ritual. The number of people in attendance was so large that no church in town could hold one-third of them, and the services were held in open air. Between one hundred and fifty and two hundred members of the Masonic fraternity were in attendance. It was by Mr. Mathews' request that Judge Fairfield officiated.
The wife of Mr. Mathews died on the 29th of August, 1853. She was the mother of three children, only one of them now living. A daughter, Anna R., died in infancy and Oscar, when about ten years old. Ralph C., the only surviving member of the family, was born on the 13th of December, 1836, at Aurora, Illinois, and is consequently forty-one years old. He was trained to business in his father's office at an early day; was in the mercantile trade for several years, commencing in 1860. For the last seven years he has been a banker, all but the first few months in company with his father. He has a wife and one child. His wife was Jennie E. Lumley, daughter of Edward Lumley, of Michigan. Their child, Oscar L., is fourteen years old.
Mr. Mathews is now of the firm of Mathews and Lyon, his partner O. H. Lyon, many years a merchant in Rockford, and now a member of the legislature. Floyd county has very few better business men than Mr. Mathews, who inherits from his father the elements of success, namely, honest, energetic industry.
Same as above:
http://www.archive.org/stream/historyoffloydco01inte/historyoffloydco01inte_djvu.txt
Cemetery:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=81800670
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
1809 - 1877 (68 years)