A PROFILE OF JOHN MATLOCK OF INDIANA - written by daughter, Vira Matlock

The following story was written by Vira Matlock, daughter of John Matlock and Martha Glenn Matlock. I have at least five copies of this sent by various members of the family of William Matlock, Sr.

JOHN MATLOCK

John Matlock and Martha Glenn were married on Thursday, Aug. 1, 1849 near Bloomington, Indiana. They were married at the old home place. William Turner performed the ceremony. The next day after the wedding they went on horseback to grandfather Matlocks and lived there until spring.

John Matlock was the son of George Matlock and Anna Young Matlock and was born November 10, 1823 near Bloomington, Indiana. The following are the names of his brothers and sisters: John (obviously should have been James since she is writing about John and there was a James whom she omitted), George, Calvin and Irvin which was Dr. I.F. Matlock who lived at Hartsburg, Illinois, Elias, Sarah Jane and Paris. The entire family has passed away.

John Matlock did not have the advantage of getting an education that the children of today have. He went to a country school for a few months in the year. Mostly he had to stay home and work. Grandfather was a veterinarian and made coffins as they were then called.

Martha Glenn was a daughter of James and Nancy Douglas Glenn and was born 10 September 1828 near Charleston, South Carolina. These are the names of her brothers and sisters: Mary Ann, Margaret, Betsy, John, Jane, Anna, James, Martha and Belle. Her father was very poor and they lived in a log house. The house was made of hewn logs and the cracks were filled with mud. There was a large living room and kitchen and one room upstairs. Pine trees and hickory nut trees grew in the yard. Many Negroes lived near them. They burned candles in those days and the Negro children would steal their candles and eat them as children of today eat candy. Biscuits were a great rarity and they ate them only when company came. The children were always delighted, when company came as they knew that they would get biscuits or little cakes as they called them. They raised cotton and one day they were in the field picking cotton, Martha’s father sent her to the house to bring him a drink of water. When she started back with the water she got lost in the cotton and began to cry. Her father heard her and went and got her.

James Glenn became dissatisfied in the south as so many were buying slaves. He did not think it was right to own slaves and decided to move with his family to Indiana. And in the fall of the year he started on the long tedious journey from Charleston, South Carolina to Bloomington, Indiana.

They made the journey in a covered wagon and took six weeks to reach their destination. It was difficult travelling and dangerous over the mountain road. The children all got out and walked except the two younger ones. Martha Glenn was about five years old yet she distinctly remembers many incidents of the journey. One place on their journey was very dangerous to pass where the French Broad River and the mountain were so close together that there was hardly room for them to pass. A short time before this a man passing there was thrown into the river and drowned when his team became frightened.

One evening they were afraid to make a fire to cook their supper as they had been informed there were panthers in the mountains. They were afraid the panthers would smell the meat cooking and attack them so they had to make out with what they had.

The old wagon in which they made this journey is now owned by a man in Salem, Indiana and is kept as an old relic. It is in a good state of preservation and is over 100 years old. It is very different from wagons of today. The bed of the wagon is boat shaped. (Note: Mr. Thomas Matlock sent me a copy of a picture of this old wagon. I am having a sketch made and hope to run it in a later issue. JNA). (I will post the photo to my web site, Shawn)

The children and some of the grandchildren of the Matlock family have a picture of the old wagon in their possession. The Glenns, on arrival in Indiana selected a farm eight miles south of Bloomington as their home.

They had to endure many hardships. Martha attended the country school which was a mile away. It was a log schoolhouse. There were no seats in it, only benches with no backs to them. Think how uncomfortable it would be to sit on that bench all day long and no back to lean against. The following are some of the lessons she had to learn: ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by, da, de, di, do, du, dy, etc.

She attended church in Bloomington, Indiana and rode the distance of eight miles on horseback to get there. When she was older she worked to help the family income. She worked in a home where there were six in the family and she did the milking, night and morning and received seventy-five cents for her work.

Having told of their childhood days I will now take up their lives after they were married. In the spring they moved from grandfather Matlock's to Aunt Polly Goodwin's place and farmed her land about three or four years. They then decided to try life in the West as it was then called and in the fall of the year they sold their crops in the field and made arrangements to come to Illinois.

They had one horse of their own and grandfather Matlock furnished a horse for them and they soon got their few belongings together and put them in the covered wagon and started for Illinois. Uncle Jim Matlock and family, Yancy Ashton and family decided to come with them and grandfather Matlock came too, so he could take his horse home and so he rode horseback to his home in Indiana.

This is what they had to bring to their new home in the west and try their fortune with. Their two children, William and Sarah, their clothes and bedding and a few dishes, $50 in gold and a little change and one horse. It took them a week to make the journey. They were anxious to have that gold as secure as possible and they put it in a teapot in the bottom of the big box they had their clothes and bedding in and nailed the lid down. I have in my possession today one of the old-fashioned bed spreads that was in the box when they came to Illinois. Mother helped to make it and I prize it very highly.

When they first came to Illinois they lived for a while with the family of Jake Hawes, it being now known as the Tomp Sumner place. Mother paid $1 a week for their board and helped with the work. Father helped dig wells that fall and husked corn and after corn husking they moved over to the Jerry Miller place one half mile west of Bethel Church and lived with the Miller family about three months. Aunt Sarah Miller was extremely kind to them and a warm friendship grew up between them which lasted all their lives.

They built a little house with one room that was l2xl4 feet. It was on the southeast corner of the Miller farm. This farm is now owned by Otto Hilgendorf. Mary Matlock was born in this place.

One morning in the spring mother was sitting by the open door, sewing. A herd of deer came running past the house. There were thirteen deer in the herd. They went on to the southwest and stayed awhile, then came back as fast as they could run and made for the timber. Uncle Jerry Miller often went deer hunting and was very successful in bringing back a deer with him. He would tie a rope to the deer and fasten the rope to the saddle and let the deer drag along on the snow. He usually gave our folks one half of the deer.

They lived at this place one year. The little house was moved with oxen to the Shively place, bought of Tom Kitchel, and there were forty acres in the farm. They moved from this place to the place now owned by Joshua Montgomery. They bought this place of Joshua Houser. Belle Matlock was born at this place and they bought eighty acres of the home place. They had a failure in a wheat crop and let the Montgomery place go back. They moved to the Houser place and lived there during the war. Maggie and Vira Matlock were born at this place.

They knew something of the hardships of life. They only owned one horse when they came to Illinois. They bought another horse and it died belore it was paid for. They did not own a cow and were too poor to pay for one. Aunt Sarah Miller gave them milk to use and each morning William Matlock would go from the Houser place to the Miller home to get the milk and very often Mrs. Miller, would drop a lump of butter in the milk for them. They had no children and Aunt Lizzie Boyles told them to come over and she would give them a start of chickens. They went over one evening and stayed all night with the Boyles family and the next morning when they were ready to start home they gave them six hens and a rooster. So we see how kind the neighbors were to each other.

The men had to haul their grain to Pekin, a distance of thirty-five miles as that was their nearest market. Several of the neighbors would go at a time and they would stay in Pekin all night and come home the next day, and they got ten cents a bushel for their corn after hauling it that distance.

They built a house on the old home place and moved there from the Houser place in August of 1865 and the house stands there at this writing. Charles Matlock was born at the old home.

Mother got her first rolling pin by making a calico dress for a woman in Indiana by the name of Margaret Smith, and John Lumbeck made her first potato masher. They are still used in the home today in preference to the ones of later date. I can remember when we did not have a carpet in the house. Mother made a rag carpet for her first one and I helped her wind the balls after the rags were sewed. She was so proud of that carpet when it was finished.

We burned tallow candles. Mother would take a cold day for making her candles so they would cool quick and she would make enough to last for some time. She parched her own coffee for a number of years.

Our first sewing machine was a hand machine which they fastened on the table and turned it by hand. A good many of the neighbors would come to our house to get stitching done on the machine. It was a chain stitch and if a stitch would get broken and started you could ravel it out quicker than you could sew it. Mother made Father a pair of jeans pants. He was away from home one day and his pants began to rip and he had to come back home to get them sewed. After that, when she made him a pair of pants she back stitched them by hand.

Mother's cupboard was made out of a box. Shelves were put in the box to put the dishes on. A curtain was hung in front of it. She used this for several years. Her table was a small breakfast table. When threshing time came she always borrowed Mrs. Wesley Shirley's table which was the same size as ours and they put the two tables together. We children were kept busy carrying kettles, dishes and pans across the road. Threshing time was a great event in the year for us. When Mrs. Shirley had threshers she borrowed mother's table and dishes. We had no screen doors and windows and we children took turns about with the fly brush keeping the flys off the table. This was a tiresome task to stand there so long while the first and second men were eating and while they washed the dishes for the second table. They did not go to the trouble then of cooking for the threshers like they do now but gave them plenty of substantial food. We had them for dinner and supper. I can well remember how Uncle Dave Bowles enjoyed the green beans and cornbread for dinner.

The knives and forks we used were of steel with wooden handles and they had to be scoured every day to keep them bright. Mother depended on Maggie and me to always have her knives scoured. We would sometimes neglect the knives when we were busy in our playhouse. One day company came for dinner and about the first thing thought of was our knives had not been scoured. We slipped them out of doors to the sandpile and soon had them bright and washed, ready for dinner.

The old ash hopper stood in the southwest corner of the yard. Father would put the ashes in the hopper and pour water on them and get the lye to make soap and mother would make a couple of barrels of soap in the spring. We had a huge woodpile and burned wood in three stoves. Mother would take lye and white corn and make a lot of hominy. Her big boiler of hominy was just getting done when we children just came from school. We were always hungry and felt that we could not wait till suppertime for some of that hominy. We would each get a saucer and spoon and mother would fill our saucers with hominy and father was as eager to get his saucer filled as any of us. We seasoned it with butter and salt and pepper and how we enjoyed it. One helping did not satisfy us and we had our saucers filled two or three times. Brother Holton was in our home one time when we had hominy and I think he enjoyed it as well as we children did.

And I think of the big bin of apples we had in the cellar and we could have all we wanted to take to school. Father bought a piece of land of Uncle Norman Sumner and he got half of the orchard. We had so many apples and there was no sale for them so we dried a lot of them. We sold $60 worth of dried apples at the store that fall and took dry goods and groceries in exchange for them, See the difference in the age we are living.

Children go to town two or three times a week in the auto. I can remember the first time I ever went to Emden. I went in the wagon with father and sister Belle. I began to inquire about things I did not understand. I asked father what that wire was for, reaching from one tall pole to another. He said "Well, Patsy, that is the town clothes line where all the people hang their clothes". I then asked him how they put them on the line when it was so high. He explained it then and told me it was the telegraph wire. I stayed in the Burnett home and their store while in town and I had some wonderful stories to tell that evening when I came home. We children seldom went to town and we always enjoyed having the pack peddlers come. They often stayed all night at our home. We thought their beads and laces were so pretty and later the peddlers came in their new wagons. One of these was Moses Gleason from Peoria and he always came to our house and stayed all night. He carried drygoods, dishes, tinware and many articles. Time has brought many changes and we see them no more.

Father generally found a nickname for every one around him and he got a nickname that stayed with him. He had a blue soldier coat with brass buttons on it. The coat was so long he said it was in the way and had mother cut it off and make it short then someone called him "Paddy" on account of it and he was known as Paddy Matlock.

For all that our parents started poor, they did not always remain poor. By hard work and strict economy they purchased 234, acres of land. Woodford Morgan got 80 acres of land by paying $4.00 for the tax title. Father bought this land of him several years later and paid $30 an acre for it. It had so many ponds on it that much of the land had to be tiled and father spent $500 in tileing it. It is now the home of Charles Matlock.

Father shipped the first load of hogs from Enden over the Peoria, Decatur and Evansville railroad. William Matlock hauled the first load of wheat to Enden. Emden was laid out in 1871.

I was very small when the mail was carried from Atlanta to Delavan by stage but I would watch for it and run out and get the mail. One cold day when the mail came I was barefooted and ran for the mail. The mail carrier told someone if those people were too poor to buy shoes for me he would buy me a pair. I had left my shoes by the fire. Mother would tie my shoestrings as tight as she could but I would keep working at them until I got them untied and my shoes off. Then I was satisfied.

We do not realize how much we owe the pioneers for work they have done for us.

The End.

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1850 Census of Monroe Co., Ind. (confirms the children named in Vira Matlock's article on John Matlock, i.e. his brothers and sisters).

George Matlock Farmer, 46 b. Tennessee; Anna, 43, b. Va.; John 24 or 21 (should have been 26-7), b. Ind.; James, 19; Calvin 17; Irvin 15; Eliza 13; Paris 9; Sarah 5 and Mary 3., All b. Ind.

According to Vira Matlock, John and Martha were married in 1849 but Martha is not listed in George's household in 1850 altho John is.

Received from Reference Room, Withers Public Library Bloomington, Illinois:

Mrs. Martha Matlock, aged 84 years, living near Bethel Church, of Lincoln, died Sunday. She was the widow of John Matlock, who died in February, 1888.

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