DUDLEY MATTHIS story - Part 1

MATHISMATTHIS, HAMILTON

Posted By: Nancee Seifert (email)
Date: 6/28/2014 at 17:40:31

DUDLEY MATTHIS STORY - Part 1

DUDLEY MATTHIS – Negro; “lynched” in 1849 at the age of 28, in Pleasanton,
Decatur Co., Iowa. I will try to give the story of his life with the
information I have.

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By Frank Myers; Lucas Countyan Blog:

These are some of the things I was thinking about last week when I stopped
at Hamilton Cemetery just north of Pleasanton in Decatur County to visit the
grave of Dudley J. S. Mathis, brought to Iowa as a slave in 1846.

THE INSCRIPTION on Dudley’s tombstone, topped by a hand pointing skyward and
surrounded by the words “There’s rest in heaven,” reads, “Sacred to the
memory of Dudley J. S. Mathis, Died Nov. 8, 1849, Aged 28 Yrs.”

Dudley’s story is frustratingly incomplete. I’ve been unable to find little
more than the inscription on the newer tombstone nearby of his owners,
William (Sept. 1, 1801-Sept. 17, 1854) and Susannah Willis (Sept. 22,
1800-Nov. 22, 1869) Hamilton.

This stone, erected many years later by Ralph Hamilton, descendant of
William and Susannah, reads, “William Hamilton and family came to Pleasanton
in the 1840’s with six slave families, including a slave named Dudley Mathis
Dudley Mathis was the first person buried in the cemetery. He died at the
age of 28 in 1849. Hamilton Cemetery was named after William Hamilton as was
Hamilton Township.”

WE KNOW that the Hamiltons originated in Grainger County, Tennessee, and
that may have been where Dudley was born, too.

Most of the Hamilton children were born in Tennessee, but the obituary of
their 13th child, Francis Marion Hamilton, states that he was born Aug. 15,
1845, in Platte County, Missouri, so we also know that the family lived

there before moving farther north. The obituary of a Hamilton daughter,
Arvesta Ann Hamilton Stone, states that the family arrived in the Pleasanton

area during 1846.
Hard to believe there were slaves in Iowa in 1846, year of statehood, so you

need to know something about the history of the extreme southern part of the

state to understand why more than a few slave-owning families, including the

Hamiltons, located there.
The current Iowa-Missouri border follows what is known as the Sullivan Line,

surveyed by J.S. Sullivan in 1816 before either Missouri or Iowa had been
granted statehood. By the time Iowa became a territory in 1838, confusion
had developed.
First of all, Sullivan had made a surveying error that caused his line,
which was supposed to be more or less straight from northwest Missouri to
the Mississippi River, to drift slightly northeast from true as it
approached the Mississippi. And there were other problems.
During the late 1830s, Albert M. Lea, formerly a U.S. Army cartographer, was

named chairman of the Iowa-Missouri Border Commission, a group named to sort

the border dispute out. He spelled out four possibilities to choose from:
(1) the original Sullivan Line, (2) the Sullivan Line as it should have been

surveyed in the first place, (3) the Joseph C. Brown line, based on an 1837
survey commissioned by Missouri that cut across Iowa from river to river
about nine miles north of the Sullivan Line and (4) another line,
optimistically embraced by Iowa, that passed from river to river a few miles

south of the Sullivan line.
To add interest, Missouri and Iowa militias almost got into a fight about
the border during 1839, when the abortive “Honey War” was almost launched.
Finally, in 1849, the U.S. Supreme court decided that the original Sullivan
Line, despite its flaw, would be the permanent border between the two states

But during the 1840s, there was a good deal of confusion about exactly which

state these southern-most miles of Iowa were in. Missouri was a slave state
and Iowa, free. A number of slave-owning families, including the Hamiltons,
moved into the disputed territory in the belief that their new homes were in

Missouri.
So that was why Dudley Mathis and other men and women the Hamiltons may have

claimed legal title to were brought into Iowa as slaves.
And it isn’t clear if the Hamiltons freed their slaves, including Dudley, or

if the slaves freed themselves. Nor is it clear if Dudley was considered
slave or free when he died, although lore suggests that he was a freed slave

who chose to remain with the Hamiltons.
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THERE ARE MANY more things I’d like to know about Dudley J.S. Mathis. His
tombstone is an especially fine one for its time, beautifully engraved slate

both larger and far better preserved than the nearby eroding marble
monuments to members of the Hamilton family. Who ensured that he was
memorialized so well?
His grave is in the center of a broad open area in the middle of the oldest
section of the Hamilton Cemetery. Why so much space for himself? Why is no
one buried near him? Because he was black?
The grave has received careful attention in the past. At some point probably

many years after his death, concrete curbing, now shattered by time, was
placed around it. By whom?
And finally, there’s the inscription in its lower right hand corner, made
enigmatic by time and lichen. Two of the words engraved next to an incised
heart seem to read “Stop hate” and I simply can’t decipher the rest. It’s
entirely possible this is not at all the proper interpretation and perhaps
one day I’ll go back with a gentle brush, equipped to make a rubbing, and
see if I can do a better job of interpreting it. But it seemed a good
message to take away from Dudley’s grave on Friday.