Virginia Vaughan Mathews

DOB Dec. 26, 1823      DOD Nov. 12, 1891

Buried:Live Oak Cemetery Division 3 Lot 139

Submitted by: Carter Fowlkes - Great nephew

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Virginia was the oldest child of Martha Hatcher and Fielding Vaughan of Cambridge, Dallas county, AL (now Crumptonia). She married Peter Early Mathews, a planter in Dallas and Wilcox counties. Peter was a brother of Joel Early Mathews, who had a large plantation near the old state capital of Cahawba. One of Joel's daughters was the first wife of N. H. R. Dawson, who planted many of the historic trees in the cemetery. Virginia and
Peter had three girls. The youngest died at age 7 on 15 July 1854, and another died three weeks later at age 12. The third, Mattie, survived childhood and married Nathaniel Chambliss, only to die two months after her wedding. Peter died at age 39 in 1856. The three girls and Peter were buried in the Joel Mathews family graveyard near Cahawba.

Virginia, alone now, lived on until 1891. Her nephew, Samuel A. Fowlkes, was the executor of her Will. Samuel is my great-grandfather. She instructed in her Will that her husband and three daughters be reinterred with her in Live Oak Cemetery, almost 40 years after they had died. Their bodies and gravestones were moved, joined Virginia in Live Oak in 1891, and rest there today.

The plantation home that Virginia and Peter built circa 1855 in Wilcox county near Camden, named Rosemary, still survives and is used as a hunting club today.

Mattie's portrait hangs today in Sturdivant Hall. She never lived there, but the portrait was donated years ago to Sturdivant and is representative of antebellum society in Dallas county.