Joseph W. Matthews

Joseph Warren Matthews was born in 1812 near Huntsville, Alabama. During his early manhood he came to Mississippi as a government surveyor, engaged in laying out the newly purchased Indian lands. Soon after the Chicasaw purchase he located as a planter in Marshall Co., near the now extinct town of Salem. In 1840, he was elected representative to the legislature from Marshall Co., and was senator from that county from 1844-1848. On June 7, 1847 the Democratic State Convention nominated Matthews for governor on the third ballot by a majority of fifty-one of twenty-seven for the other candidates. Matthews won the gubernatorial election over the Whig candidtate, Major A.H. Bradford of Marshall County, by a vote of 26,985 to 13, 997.