CAPT. NICHOLAS G. MATLOCK - From History of Randolph and Macon Co’s. Mo. 1884:

No history of Randolph County would be complete which failed to include the biographical sketch of the subject, CAPT. NICHOLAS G. MATLOCK. Capt. Matlock, a native of North Carolina, was partly reared in this county, and this has continued to be his home up to the present time, when already the shadows of old age have begun to fall around him. His life has been one of value to the county and not a little prominent while it has been one of credit to himself and to the name which he bears. In the long struggle of might against right, during the late war, he was found standing up gallantly defending with sword in hand the homes and institutions of the wronged and weaker side, from the time the first shot was fired until the banner which represented the principle for which Washington fought nearly a century before, the right "of one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate, and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them" until that banner went down in defeat in a cataclysm of death to rise no more, perhaps for generations. But - "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; the eternal years of God are hers." The standards of Poland and Ireland and Hungary, and other peoples struggling for independence and to govern themselves by laws of their own making, have also gone down. But can organized tyrany forever prevail over the highest hopes and aspirations of a brave and noble people? To ask the question is to answer it. "Time makes all things right," and in the end government by force will perish from the earth and the oppressor's power will be no more. Capt. Matlock was born in Caswell County, N.C., June 22, 1820. Whilst he was in his youth his parents, James and Martha (Gunn) Matlock, removed to Missouri and located in Randolph Co., where they lived until their death, both to a ripe old age. The father died in 1868, aged 87, and the mother in 1871, aged 82. Nicholas G., the subject of this sketch, was the fifth in their family of children, and the eldest of their only three sons. All of the family are living and are now themselves, the heads of families except the second brother, who died in 1850, leaving a family.

                            TO INDEX