You are correct, Mathews did have a home in the Osage Reservation in Kansas. I have thousands of notes on his life, but here it is in summary.
He was born in KY, in 1809 (-1815). Fitzgerald, Sister Mary Paul, Beacon on the Plains; Boots, John R. The Mat(t)thews Family: an anthology of Mathews lineage.
He came from a wealthy and powerful VA line. Case, Nelson. Labette County History.
He was appointed blacksmith through the 1830s to the Creek (and later the Senecas). He was later appointed the Osage blacksmith. Many sources, including Case; O'Connell, Wayne A.
He purchased his trading post in what is now Oswego, Ks from one of the Augustus Chouteau (Not sure which Chouteau this was, for the Augustus Chouteau that was one of the head of the American Fur Co. had by then passed. Likely, one of his Osage offspring or a representative of the company). This was in 1838 or 1843, depending on the source. One source is a letter from Mathews' son, William Shirley Mathews, to Nelson Case.
He married both of William Shirley Williams Osage daughters, Mary Ann and Sarah. It may have been common among the Osages then for the younger sisters to live with their married sister, according to a story told by Father Paul Ponziglione in his annals. Citations for Mathews multiple marriages are many, including Case; Burns, Osage Baptisms...; White, WW, Annals of Osage Mission; White, WW, History of Neosho County; A story in Favor, Alpheus. Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man tells of the mountain man visiting John and Mary Ann in Little Town.
The trading post he purchased was first operated by one of the Papins, likely Melicour, and was first located upstream on the Neosho. It was one of the many built by the Chouteau family located up tributaries to the Arkansas after the fur and game had pretty much played out at Three Forks. Chronicles of Oklahoma. Burns, Louis Francis, History of the Osage.
The trading post was typical double log cabin, two story, with breezeway, and covered with burr oak clapboards and had plastered walls. On it was a race track. He owned several slaves and raised thoroughbred horses which he raced from Texas, to KY. I have found newspaper clippings about his horses. Case; White; Burns.
He not only owned a couple slaves, whom he treated benevolently, as referred to by O'Connell (O'Connell's motive was to paint Mathews as the romantic "founder" of Oswego KS, but Mathews was neither the innocent saintly man that O'Connell portrays, nor the founder of Oswego. Oswego was founded by settlers who came to Kansas after that section of the state had been more or less subdued by the Union. He had many slaves, including children. His operation was too large not to have many slaves. He had 30 acres on the hill at present day Oswego, and 100 acres below. He was a subtler, ran a blacksmith shop, raised and raced thoroughbreds. Raised cattle, and farmed. He owned three trading posts. He had 100 head of cattle and no less than 50 horses. Burns' Baptisms speaks of a young slave girl that was owned by Mathews. Burns, Baptisms...; Mathews, John Joseph, Children of the Middle Waters; Case; White.
He seems to have opened his trading post at Little Town (Oswego) in 1843. He was there when the McGhee brothers arrived in Chetopa, 8 miles south, in late 1847. He posted a $5000.00 bond for the post in 1847. He purchased a trading post at the Old Creek Agency in 1847, after the previous owner (a man named Gillespie, I believe) had been killed in a fight in a tavern. (Chronicles of Oklahoma). He owned an interest in an in-law's (Sammy Gimore) trading post in Osage Mission (St. Paul), which had previously been owned by J. Linn (Carthage).
He was, prior to the conflict on the border, good friends with the priests at the Osage Mission (White, Annals of Osage Mission; and, letters of Schoenmakers, Ponziglione, et al. Life and Letters). His children attended school at the Mission.
His stepson was: William P. Mathes, also called Nix, Nixon, and Red Corn. This was Mathews' step child. William P was born to Mary Ann Williams and Lorenzo Dow Nixon. Shortly after William's birth, Lorenzo left the Osages, and - so far as I know - never returned. Nixon was born about 1832 and worked as a layman with the priests, showing up as witness in many baptisms. He was later a Baptist minister. In the 1850s he lived a few miles north of what is now Oswego near what is now the Blackdog Trail Gun Club, on a bluff overlooking the Neosho.
John Mathews Sr. and Mary Ann Williams were wed in 1834 in Jackson County MO.
Johns and Mary Ann's oldest son was John Mathews Jr., who was born in 1843. He is listed by Cheatham, Gary L. as having joined a confederate company in June 1861. This is a supposition that I had come by independently, though I had no hard sources (but only family lore). However, I am not sure that it is a correct supposition. Mathews Sr. seems to have formed two companies. The first, The Cherokee Outlet Company, was formed at a meeting in Chetopa in June 1861, which is referred to one of the works by Abel, Annie H. I think it was the American Indians in the Civil War, p47. There are a few other sources for this, also. Mathews was not listed as an officer in this company. One of the officers listed was a Robert D. Foster, whose descendants still live on a large spread in the area. This company, formed in Chetopa at the house of Larkin McGhee, went on to join Stand Watie's Cherokee Mounted Rifles (according to Cheatham, "If the Union Wins, We Won't Have Anything Left" Kansas History, p 170). This would make sense, as Mathews and Stand Watie seems to have been good friends, and Stand Watie was present at the second raid of Humboldt. The Company that conducted the first raid on Humboldt seems to be a different company than that which formed in Chetopa and conducted the second raid on Humboldt, although some of the first raiders undoubtedly participated in the second raid. This first group seems to have been formed in haste from Osages and mixed-blood Cherokees that lived in and around Little Town (Oswego) and Chetopa. It is my assertion that this same group of men were close friends of Mathews, ones upon whom he had previously relied to defend his ranch (when his stable was burned in 1856), and to drive off illegal settlers from the Cherokee Neutral Lands, adjacent to his ranch. The second group was composed of Stand Watie, Allen Mathews, some of the Adairs, Col Talbot from MO., Tom Livingston from Mo., and a Col Courcy (Truth be known, no one knew for sure who was involved in the burning of Humboldt on the second raid, so the newspapers blamed every MO bushwhacker that they could think of).
Other children of John Mathews were Susan Mathews, Jane Mathews, Ann Elizabeth Mathews (A. E. was killed in a fire in 1857), William Shirley Mathews (born in 1848 at the Creek Agency, went on to become a prominent Osage Council member, bank owner, businessman, and judge) Alysious Allen Mathews (who became a bushwhacker operating out of Neosho MO, and who seems to have taken vengeance on several of the people who hunted down and killed Mathews, including one of my wife's ancestors), and Edward Mathews.
William P Mathes had attended school in Florissant, MO and at the Mission. He and the older children finished school at the Mission, but the younger children knew only the Mission School.
Mathews and his in-law, Sammy Gilmore, became more and more at odds in the years leading to the Civil War. As people were forced to choose sides, Gilmore, who had leaned towards the side of the south (he was married in the pro-slavery hotel at Ft. Scott), became an outspoken abolitionist. In early 1861, they got into an argument in which Mathews threatened his life. As things go, the threat grew into a grudge, and Mathews was soon looking to get his money back from the store that he had financed for Gilmore. When Gilmore resisted, Mathews threatened to kill him. Gilmore took this seriously. By spring, the word was that Mathews was not only threatening the life of Gilmore, but also that of Father Schoenmakers, at the Mission.
At the same time, Ben McCulloch commissioned Mathews a captain, and asked his aid in organizing the Indians in his area for the Confederacy. This led, I believe, to the June meeting in Chetopa, and may have bolstered Mathews' resolve to recapture his goods from the store in Osage Mission. His group of angry mixed-bloods now had sanction. Mathews apparently put a $500.00 bounty on the head of Schoenmakers and Gilmore. He organized this group to go to the mission in search of Gilmore, his money, or his stock in the store, or all the above. His stepson, William P. Mathes left Little Town several hours in advance of the company of raiders and warned both Gilmore and the priest. Gilmore packed up the most valuable of his stock from the store and fled with the priest, first to Humboldt, and then on to St. Marys. Others in the party may have spoken of killing Schoenmakers, but - according to a re-telling by Father Paul Ponziglione - Mathews denied making threatening the priest, and even defended the mission from men in his own company who were set on raping and pillaging.
The company never caught up with the priest and Gilmore. On the way to the mission a flash flood prevented them from crossing Lightning Creek. They arrived at the mission the next day, spent the night at Four Mile Creek, where they hung a local abolitionist (name unknown), and proceeded to Humboldt the following day. Schoenmakers and Gilmore had nearly a two day head start. When the raiders got to Humboldt, they didn't find Gilmore, but did find an undefended town. Mathews, bent on regaining his loss, terrorized the town, raided it of all its goods, and left. There are no reliable source that this first raid torched the town. They took a dozen free blacks from Humboldt. This was Sept 8 or 12, 1861, depending on the source.
On their return, the raiders came through the Mission, where, according to Ponziglione, most continued on to MO. Mathews returned home, but was soon betrayed. Months earlier, he had taken in a man named John Burke, a teacher from one of the Cherokee Nation Public Schools. The man was wanted for a "serious crime" and Mathews had agreed to put him to work on his ranch, supervise him, and vouch for him, so that the young man could avoid jail or worse. Burke contacted Blunt at Ft. Lincoln, and led him to Little Town. Mathews discovered the betrayal, made arrangements for his children, and fled. According to both John Joseph Mathews and Susan Mathews, John Mathews never slept two nights in the same spot after he was betrayed. The night before he died, he dined with Larkin McGhee. He was killed at the home of Lewis Rogers, in the Cherokee Neutral Lands, near Chetopa.
Some accounts speak of a group of sixty that was caught when Mathews was killed. This is unlikely for their would have been more deaths, including some on the Union side. Some speak of finding only Mathews at the home. The latter seems to be true. Ponziglione says that Burke fired the shot that killed Mathews, while other accounts say that Mathews was shot several times. J G Blunt's 6th Kansas Cavalry from Fort Scott and the Humboldt Home Guard (accompanied by several political aspirants from northern Kansas towns) had come down opposite sides of the Neosho and met above Chetopa. They surrounded the house, hiding in weeds and in corn fields. At dawn, they called out Mathews, who ran from the house without a shirt, carrying a double barreled shotgun. He was killed instantly.
Blunt rounded up all the men that he could find in Chetopa, took them all to Little Town, where Burke testified against them. They were, after a day, let go, and Mathews' goods at his trading post were distributed to the Home Guard as payment for their services. Goods taken from Mathews trading post included 50 horses, 500 buffalo robes and six bear skins. Mathews' son, William S., went to retrieve his father's body and bury it in Little Town, but found it already buried (in Chetopa). Mathews ranch was burned. So were many houses in Chetopa. Little Town, according to some accounts, was burned, too. The slaves were freed.
Mathews children had hid. Sue made her way to KY. William S and Edward went to Texas with some of the Adairs. William P. stayed in the Cherokee Nation. Allen went to Missouri.
After the war, Susan, William S. and Edward all eventually rejoined the Osages in the new Osage Reservation in IT. I am not sure what happened to Jane, or what ever became of Allen. Within a month, Burke was killed by people seeking vengeance for Mathews' betrayal. In January 1863, W.W. Hill invited two men into his house to eat dinner. The men were passing by his house and claimed to be Union soldiers. After dinner, they told him they were there to avenge the death of John Mathews and murdered him. Samuel Clay Simons, whose second wife was Mary Mathews, a sister of John's, lived in the Neutral Lands near Cato. In 1864, he was murdered by Allen Mathews for his participation in the hunting down of John Mathews.
William S. Mathews married Eugenia Williams. One of their children was the late Lillian Mathews, curator of the Osage Tribal Museum. Another child was John Joseph Mathews, writer and Osage historian.
That is an overview of John Mathews' life as I know it. I think it's accurate. I have been compiling notes since 1995. I have a lot more information if you need it, and am shopping for a publisher for a novel I have written based on the life of John Mathews with the main characters being Mathews, Father Paul Ponziglione, Sammy Gilmore, and Iron Hawk (White Hair, Chief during the 1850s) and Red Corn (Willian P. Mathes).
--------------------------------------- The reason I asked about John Mathews Jr. and the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles is that the only documentation that I can find is the article by Cheatham. I was hoping to substantiate his claim. I had already come to the same conclusion and had written it in the novel that he joined the Cherokee company, but I had no real hard facts to prove it. I am at a loss how to prove whether or not John Jr. served in the Cherokee Company.
Thanks,
Steve Hager