Bradley Mathews 1843-1918

MATHEWS, LESTER

Posted By: Debbie (email)
Date: 10/30/2005 at 18:26:20

Obituary-unknown newspaper
His Life Was a Blank B. Mathews,
75 years old, died a child in mentality
Man With Remarkable Mundane Existence
Lived From Infancy to Old Age Without
Learning to Talk
A death brought to a close a remarkable mundane existence, occurred at the Old Folks department of the Des Moines County Farm at 7 o'clock last night when Bradley Mathews, aged seventy-five years, whose mentality was stunted in infancy was summoned.
He had only been ill only a few days and although he was given every kind attention by the people in the Old Folks department, who learned a respect for him for his mildness, despite his barreness of mentality, he sank rapidly, and last night went quietly into a better world, where by all the rights and will of Providence he is destined for better things.

Blighted in Infancy
When he was three years old and his parents' pride, the man who never outlived childhood, was taken ill with brain fever, and for a long time lay at the point of death. His folks, then poor, but hardy pioneers, doted on the boy. He was their favorite of a family of bright little fellows, whom they had just brought to prairie Iowa to give them a chance to grow up in the promised land of the nation.
After hovering at the brink of death for a long time, the boy regained his health, and strangely enough, his body grew normally and he became physically a strong man. But he was always a charge. Never violent, he was never the less always needful of close attention, and his faithful parents cared for him with loving tenderness, trying to make up in kindness what had been denied him by misfortune. When he was fifty his parents died and it was deemed best by other relatives to put him in the care of the people of the county farm, who were recompensed for his keeping. He had been at the county farm for thirty years and was a most familiar figure to those who visited the farm often. His actions were those of a child, always, and relatives stated that although he could not talk, he could understand to a certain extent. He always was a willing worker, and once he started to do anything he had to be told to quit.
Old and bent and gray, Bradley Mathews was still a child in every thing but appearance but appearance and years, he went to his grave, through the tender mercies of his maker, much the same as he had been born into the world near four score years before, deprived of a sense of things but with the innocence of infancy.
His case is considered a most remarkable one. A man of seventy-five who never learned to talk, who never committed a known misdeed, who never had a real comprehension of the world in which he lived. He died of an illness that was not diagnosed becuase he could not even tell the attendants where his pains were or of the manner of his suffering.

Born Here 75 Years Ago
The unfortunate man's life was remarkable also in the fact that his lived in Des Moines County for nearly eightly years. He was born in this county shortly after his father, Herman Mathews, moved to Lowell in this county, about seventy-seven eyars ago. The father did much of the important pioneer work in this part of the state and built the first dam across Skunk River and also did pioneer railroading work in this section. Today, the descendants of the first pioneer, Herman Mathews, are numbered among the best known and most
The deceased's remains areat Prugh's undertaking rooms and the funeral will held on Tuesday afternoon with interment in Burge Cemetery near New London, at two o'clock. The cortege will leave Prugh at 12:30 Tuesday afternoon.
Death occurred in 1918. He was born April 9, 1843.