Excepts from: High Points in the Life of W. H. Mathews, by Mamie Helen Mathews

... I am told there was a disagreement between the children in the Mathews family, and one member, Thomas Jefferson Mathews, left Abbeville, South Carolina, with his family and possessions and migrated to Pontotoc County in northern Mississippi. This Mr. Mathews was living with his second wife*, and his son who was approximately thirteen years of age at the time. The family of this son, William Henry Mathews, born in December, 1846, is of whom I write, W. H.'s grandfather.

The Civil War began in 1861 and the South was stripped of it's wealth. The money was no longer of any value, thus making the rolls of Confederate bills stored in a trunk, no longer worth anything. The Mathews family was never reimbursed for their money, for in the years to follow the house burned and the trunk holding the money burned before the government made partial payment tot he people for the Confederate money.

William Henry "Billy" was responsible for saving important documents from the Pontotoc County Courthouse located in Pontotoc, Mississippi, during the war. His brother, Lewis, died in Columbus, Mississippi, serving the southern cause and left Billy an only child.

In the next few years, William Henry met and married Harriett Ann Roye, born in 1846 in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, and lived in and around the Pleasant Grove/ Woodland communities. he operated an oxen pulled wagon delivery service from Pontotoc, and at times Memphis, as part of his income along with farming and operating a community store. He told of a time the Chickasaw Indians stopped him and wanted to take the goods he was hauling. he gave them whiskey and when they were good and drunk, he left them in the road.

William Henry and Harriett Ann had ten children, five boys and five girls. He had always said he would have a large family because he had been an only child.

Near the end of his life, William Henry was living with his son Henry Thomas Mathews, in Houston, Mississippi, for a short period. He would frequently have fits in the night where he would stand up in the bed and march around, shouting "cut some more brush and hand it to me, there's not enough to fill up this gully". It was said he was reliving his trip from South Carolina to Mississippi and was filling gullies with tree branches and stomping them down to allow for the wagons to cross over.

William Henry Mathews died in April, 1938, in Pontotoc, at his son John Mathews home, and was buried at Pleasant Grove Cemetery, Pontotoc Co, Mississippi.

* second wife was Mary Jane Fortescue. First wife and mother of Henry Thomas Mathews was Jane Christopher who died sometime before 1850 in Abbeville, SC. The migration is believed to have taken place sometime in the early 1850's, around 1852.