James N. Mathews
James Mathews, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre
James Nichols Mathews
1823-1871
Biographical Sketch
James Nicholas Mathews was a native of rural Alabama with American forebears in Kentucky and Alabama. He moved from Alabama to Mississippi, then on to western Illinois. From there he followed the Mormons to frontier Utah. He was an American frontiersman and pioneer of southern Utah.
Early Life In the South
Mathews was born to Knowel and Martha Ann Mathews in Pickens County in west-central Alabama. Those of his America forebears who can be identified were from Kentucky and Alabama. In the early 1830s they moved across the border to De Kalb, Kemper County in east-central Mississippi, then to Hinds County in central Mississippi. Eventually, they heard the Mormon message and moved to Illinois.
Migration to Utah
After the death of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith and the continued unrest among Mormons and the original settlers, the Mormons decided to move farther west. James Mathews joined the Mormon migration across Iowa and Nebraska territories and eventually to Utah, arriving in 1849. Mathews was a small slaveowner who had brought at least one slave to Utah.
In 1851, Mathews was among the group of southern slaveholders who accompanied Amasa M. Lyman to San Bernardino to establish a Mormon colony there. It is not clear when Mathews returned to Utah. However, like the other southerners in California, they left without their slaves. California was a free state and their slaves were deemed freed. They were not permitted to remove them.
In 1857, Mathews was among the original settlers in Washington, Washington County in the southwestern corner of Utah. These southerners had come to southern Utah to introduce cotton culture to the region. In 1857, thirty-year-old Mathews married fifteen-year-old Clara Elizabeth Slade (1841-1891), of Harris County, Texas, the daughter of William Rufus Slade and Julianne H. Slade. This was a Reformation-era marriage.
In the Iron Military District: 2nd Lieutenant James Mathews, Company I, John D. Lee's 4th Battalion
In September 1857, Mathews was a 2nd Lieutenant of the 2nd platoon in Washington, in Harrison Pearce’s Company I, part of John D. Lee’s 4th Battalion. He was probably recruited on Sunday, September 6 and his party moved north on Monday the 7th and met Lee that evening some miles south of Mountain Meadows. The next day they moved up to the Meadows and encamped there in the "southern" encampment. Mathews specific role during the massacre on Friday the 11th is not known. Mathews was not named in the 1859 arrest warrant. However, John D. Lee identified him in Mormonism Unveiled," Lee's autobiography published posthumously in 1877.
Later Life
In the early 1860s Mathews and his family moved to Pine Valley in northern Washington County where they remained except for a brief stay in Panaca in eastern Nevada. In 1864, Mathews and several other families arrived in Meadow Valley where they built sod houses and planted wheat. However, unrest resulting from the Black Hawk War caused these Nevada settlements to be abandoned and the Mathews returned to Pine Valley. He pursued farming and grazing livestock. He may have also helped in efforts to maintain the peace with local Indians during the general Ute, Paiute, and Navajo uprisings in the late 1860s. One report mentions Constable James Mathews holding a renegade Indian as prisoner on orders of Judge John D. Lee in 1868. James N. Mathews died in 1871. He was survived by his wife and five children.
References
Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 28-29, 50 fn 11; Beller, "Negro Slaves in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly, 2/4 (October 1929), 124, 126; Bradshaw, Under Dixie Sun: A History of Washington County, 184, 186, 189, FamilySearch.org; Essom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, 1026; Hulse, "The Afterlife of St. Mary’s County," Utah Historical Quarterly, 55/3 (Summer 1987), 241-42; Larson, I Was Called to Dixie, 55, 160; Larson, The Red Hills of November, 155-156; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 228, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C, 261.
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