I started researching my Matthews ancestry in 2000 and as time goes by I chip away a little more at the puzzles with which I am faced. My success seems to grow exponentially year after year as I make contact with more and more helpful people who either toss in their two cents or offer alternative views on certain mysteries. Ideally my goal is to trace the lines of all of James Mathews Sr.'s grandchildren through at least 1850. So far I'm about 50/50 on achieving that. Some branches of the family seem to appear out of nowhere and yet are almost definitely related to the family at-large intrigue me immensely. Other branches of the family who seem to have left few marks upon history and faded away into the distant past generate a maelstrom of curiosity within me. In particular those branches are: the family of James Mathews Sr.'s son Matthew who died in Virginia of which virtually nothing is known; several of the children and grand-children of Isaac Mathews Sr. who died in Halifax Co., NC in 1768; a couple of the children of Isaac's brother Thomas who moved to Chatham Co., NC; and the daughters of James Mathews Sr. as well as a few others.
So, to attempt to find those families I track several different lines of Mathews that for the moment have no conclusive document or record with which to tie them into the other Mathews lines. I track those families because my intuition tells me there is a connection and in many cases I have bits of evidence here and there that seem to imply a relationship, but inclusive and speculative evidence is not enough to explicitly make a connection.
Everyone that I track and include in my database is assigned an index number once I am fairly certain of their order of birth. The main trunk of the family starts with James Mathews Sr. and his index number is M. His sons are M1 through M5 and their children would be M11 through M1x, M21 through M2x, etc. For those families that I am also tracking, but for whom I have not been able to attach to the main family I use Mz followed by a letter specific to that family, for example Henry Mathis of Edgefield County, SC is Mzn. As I am able to attach families together their Mz number may go away so there are blanks in this numbering system as I systematically merge lines once I establish connections. For the moment I am tracking 3 as yet unattached Mathews families of Edgefield County, SC in addition to the main line of James Mathews, Sr.:
James Mathews Sr. of Virginia / North Carolina - M
James Mathews and wife Dinah Braswell/Breazel of Edgefield County - Mze
I'm now more than reasonably certain that this James is the son of Thomas Mathews (M1) so he's been merged into the main M file under User ID M14. This link no longer points to his old family file.
John Mathews and wife Susannah Hardy - Mzk
The relationship of John Mathews to the other Mathews of Edgefield County is unknown at this time. What is known is that his wife Susannah Hardy was a daughter of Richard Hardy and his wife Molly Mathews Hardy. Molly was a daughter of one of James Mathews Sr's sons, Charles. Both Molly and Richard are named in a Brunswick County Chancery Cause after the death of Charles relating to the division of his estate. The 1790 census for Edgefield County shows a John Mathews sojourning in the household of Richard Hardy, presumably the same John who would later marry Richard's daughter Susannah. My personal opinion is that this John Mathews was a grandson of Charles via his daughter Lucretia who had married yet another John Mathews. I will note that there are those who disagree with me on this point such as Harry Porter. I will agree that the records on the John Mathews who was a son of Lucretia make it appear that he possibly stayed in Virginia. There are many men named John Mathews in this family making distinctions between who was whom quite difficult.
Henry Mathis and wife Nancy - Mzn
I will readily admit that I do not have a theory on who Henry was that is strong enough to put into print. The only thing I can point out is that his eldest son, Thomas Charles Mathis, carries the same name as the man whom I believe to be the brother of James Mathews Sr. The elder Thomas Charles Mathews died in Northampton County, NC in the 1700s. It is possible that Henry was some descendant of his, however I make no claim to this possibility one way or the other. There was a book written on the Thomas Charles Mathis family in the 1960s that traced his descendants. That book offered no suggestion on the ancestry of Thomas Charles Mathis, however the estate papers of Henry Mathis make it quite clear that Thomas was his eldest son.
William Mathews and wife Susannah Reade - Mzp
Originally I had this William assigned as a son of Charles Mathews (M4), but recently it has been determined that I was incorrect. A deed transcription from Brunswick County, VA showed Charles Mathews selling or giving his son William some land and then subsequently William sold that land and his wife released dower on it. Great! He had a wife..but..... The person who transcribed the deed put a blank in for the name of the wife leaving me to believe that either her name was absent or there was something wrong with the page leaving her name illegible. turns out her name was completely legible and it was Mary, not Susannah. Along with a ton of circumstantial evidence we now know that the William Mathews of Edgefield County, SC is indeed the son of Charles Mathews (a fact that I wanted to believe for so verrrry long...). So, that leaves this William out, but I sincerely believe that this William who married Susannah Reade is a son of Matthew Mathews (M5). I am a long way from proving that however.