In memory of John MatthewsAuthor of the memorial page is Cemetery Manager

The life of First Lieutenant John Matthews is steeped in mystery. Born in Cornwall, England on September 15, 1820, he married Judith Newton Matthews in 1847. The couple immigrated to the United States and settled in Allegany County, Maryland by 1850, where Matthews worked as a miner. By 1860 Matthews was working as Postmaster of Oakland, Maryland. The couple had seven children: William, Margaret, Fannie, Susan, Elizabeth, Arthur, and George. George was born in 1861, the first year of the Civil War, and was named George McClellan Matthews, undoubtedly named after the popular Union general of the time. At the age of forty-two, Matthews enlisted in the Union army and was mustered into service as a First Lieutenant on March 13, 1862, serving as regimental quartermaster of the Third Maryland Infantry Regiment, Potomac Home Brigade. Captured and paroled at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia on September 15, 1862, he was sent to Camp Parole, outside Annapolis, Maryland and was listed as present there on December 19, 1862. He was mustered out of the army on January 2, 1865, just prior to the end of the war. Following the war, the Matthews family settled in Westminster and ran a successful grocery store for about twenty years before moving to Baltimore. Lieutenant Matthews died on January 3, 1889, but there seems to be some discrepancy as to where he is buried. There is a G.A.R. headstone in Historic Westminster Cemetery; however, the stone seems to indicate that Lieutenant Matthews may have actually been buried back in his home cemetery at St. Just at Penwith Church in Cornwall, England.