Sims L. Matheny
Sims Lafayette Matheny, his personal and family background, and his involvement in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Sims L. Matheny (1833-1881)
Biographical Sketch
Sims Lafayette Matheny was a native of Tennessee with forebears in Virginia and South Carolina. Over his lifetime he moved from Tennessee to Arkansas and then Texas before settling in frontier Utah. He was an American frontiersman and pioneer in southern Utah.
Matheny’s parents were in Monroe, Mississippi before moving to Tennessee where Matheny was born. In the late 1830s they moved to Green County, Arkansas and by the early 1840s they had moved to Montgomery County in Texas territory, later the Republic of Texas. In the 1850s the Mathenys immigrated to Utah territory, some of them settling in Fillmore, Millard County in central Utah.
In 1855, Matheny married Ellen Barton Ray, (1839-1920) a native of Mississippi.
By 1857, Matheny and his wife had joined the colony of Southerners in the new settlement of Washington, Washington County in the southwestern corner of Utah.
In September 1857, 24-year-old Sims Matheny was a sergeant of the first Washington platoon in Company I of John D. Lee’s 4th Battalion. He was listed in the 1859 federal arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh but there is little other information about his role in the massacre.
In 1859, Matheny married Ellen’s sister, Martha Jane Ray (1842-1890), also of Mississippi. Eventually they returned to Fillmore in central Utah. During the Black Hawk War, "Sims L. Mathens" was listed in the Millard County militia muster rolls and saw action in a ten-day campaign against Black Hawk’s raiders that included the engagement at Gravelly Ford in Sevier County, 1866.
The 1880 census lists, Matheny, age 46, in Fillmore with his wives Ellen (listed as suffering from a nervous debility ) and Martha Jane and a servant. His wives were keeping house while Matheny and the servant were working on the railroad.
In 1881, Matheny died and was buried in Fillmore, survived by his two wives and children.
References: Alder and Brooks, The History of Washington County, 29, fn. 11; Gibbs, "Black Hawk’s Last Raid – 1866," Utah Historical Quarterly, 4/4 (October 1931), 106-107; FamilySearch.org.
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