Mathew Anderson
Mathew Anderson, farmer and stock raiser, is a son of Robert Anderson, who was a native of Virginia, He came to Ohio in 1816, and settled on the waters of Buckskin Creek, in Ross County, where he remained but three years, when he removed to Fayette County, in 1819, soon after which he married Miss Sarah Rowe, daughter of Jesse Rowe, who was one of the pioneers of the county. They were the parents of four children, three sons and one daughter: Isaac married, and died; Jane married, and lives in the neighborhood; John was unmarried, and died at the age of twenty-two. The father died December 2, 1878, at the advanced age of more than eighty-four years. The mother died some six years previous. They lived together as husband and wife for more than fifty years, and were devoted Christians, both members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Mathew, our subject, was born October 23, 1821, and married Miss Mary A. Davids, October 28, 1847, with whom he lived six years, when she died, leaving no children. Mr. Anderson married for his second wife Mrs. Kaylor, daughter of William Merchant. One daughter was the fruit of this marriage, now the wife of John Rowe, living in the neighborhood. Mrs. Anderson lived but four years, when Mr. Anderson was again a widower. He married for his third wife Miss Sarah D. Adams, daughter of Albert Adams, Esq., residing near Greenfield, Ohio, and sister to Rev. Colonel Adams, of the 81st O. V. I., whose history appears elsewhere in this work. They have three children, two sons and one daughter. Isaac Newton, a very promising child, fell into the well and lost his life, when but eighteen months old. Nancy Ruth, a young woman of seventeen, is absent from home, attending school at Greenfield, Ohio. Albert Porter is but fifteen years of age, weighing one hundred and fifty-seven pounds.
Mr. Anderson owns and lives on a most magnificent farm of a thousand acres, located on the Anderson pike, one mile west from the Washington and Martinsburg pike. He has been, all his life, a man of great energy and industry. But few men have performed so much hard labor on the farm, in the way of clearing up lands, raising large crops (sometimes five hundred acres of corn in a season), and feeding stock, as has Mr. Anderson. He has done a very large amount of business during the last twenty-five years, assuming great risks at times, and sometimes sustaining heavy losses; but by great energy and perseverance, and, as he puts it, the "blessing of a kind Providence," his latter days, financially, bid fair to be better than the past. He is a straightforward, Christian gentleman, assisted by a most estimable wife.
From R. S. Dills' History of Fayette County