Stephen Matheny - Will of Stephen Matheny

Will of Stephen Matheny

Many courthouses were engulfed by fire during the Civil War, forever destroying records that would be valuable to modern day genealogists. Many Rockingham County, Virginia court records were burnt in 1864; the wagon transporting them to safer locations was overtaken by Union soldiers. Some records survived, spared the fate of ashes; among those records was the will of Stephen Matheny. The author has not seen to what extent the will endured; however, the abstract has been published:

“Matheny, Stephen; Aug. 7, 1848

“My wife. My granddaughter Elizabeth. My 12 children. My son Elijah Matheny exr. Witnesses, John Blain, Eugenia Anderson, Abner Blain. Proved May 1849.”

--Wayland, John Walter and David A. Heatwole. Virginia Valley Records: Genealogical and Historical Materials of Rockingham County, Virginia, and Related Regions (With Map); Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. (Baltimore, Maryland), 1965. P. 420. (Via Google Books)

Heirs of Stephen Matheny

John Wilson, George Oliver, Cynthia Ann, Fielding, Joseph, Susan, Henry, Mary Jane, William, and Elijah are consistently named as ten of the living children of Stephen Matheny and Susanna Argenbright at the writing of his will. Trouble arises when identifying the others. Some genealogies have assumed these unnamed survivors as daughters based on the age and gender statistics from the 1810, 1820, 1830, and 1840 Censuses. The oldest unnamed daughter would have been born in time for the 1810 Census and the youngest between 1815 and 1820; the other daughters, not believed by the author to have survived, were born between 1810 and 1815.

Unnamed Daughters

The author identifies the oldest and youngest unnamed daughters as Sophia and Barbara. Sophia, born in 1809, married John Fleming in 1848; she died in 1877 with her Rockingham County death record identifying her father as being named Stephen. Barbara, born around 1816/7, married Enos Swink in 1842 and Peter Whitesel in 1851, and died after the 1870 Census; the marriage certificate of her daughter Malinda Swink named her mother as Barbara Matheny.

The strongest evidence to affirm this belief as fact is the 1884 chancery court summons many heirs and descendants of Stephen Matheny in Williams and Minor vs George W. Rumsey, etc. property dispute. The author has not seen the court papers but the summary of the case is available online, via the Library of Virginia:

“Rockingham County (Va.) Summons, 1884. Consists of a summons for John Matheny, William Matheny, Fielding Matheny, Oliver Matheny, Joseph Matheny, Sarah Allen and her husband, Elijah Matheny, Josephine Cave, Marcellus Ward Cave, Isaac Fleming, Malinda Sprouse, the unknown heirs of Margaret Cave, and the unknown heirs of Barbara Whitesell by both Swink and Whitesell, to answer an original and amended bill in chancery exhibited against them in the cause of Williams and Minor vs. George W. Rumsey, etc.”

--Library of Virginia. Virginia Heritage: Guides to Manuscripts & Archival Collections in Virginia. <http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=lva/vi01789.xml&gt; Accesed 24 Aug 2012.
--Rockingham County (Va.) Summons, 1884. Local government records collection, Rockingham County Court Records. Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 23219.

Barbaras' surname confirmed from daughters Susannah Whitesel Death Cert & Malinda Ann (Swink) Stoutameyer Marriage Cert.