Ancestors

Pleasant Matthews

Pleasant Matthews was born in 1797, by her gravestone's count on 16 August 1797. She grew up in Loudoun County, Virginia, and in 1819 she was living in the house of Richard Matthews there. On 16 January 1819 she gave birth to a daughter in that house. The Loudoun County record of the birth names Newton Furr as the father. She married Newton Furr, a Virginia farmer the same age, and raised eleven children to adulthood in Loudoun and Frederick counties: Richard E., Elizabeth, Isaac Newton, Squire M., Enoch Chapman, Margaret, Pleasant, Mary Ann, Stephanus W., Sylvanus B. and Martha Virginia, the youngest, born in 1843. Her daughter Pleasant carried her name, and so later did a granddaughter, Ida Pleasant O'Brien.

In the 1850s the family moved to LaSalle County, Illinois. On 15 August 1857 Pleasant went before Milton H. Swift, a notary at Ottawa, to acknowledge the sale of the old Frederick County farm on Timber Ridge to her son Squire. As the law required for a married woman giving up her dower, he examined her "privily and apart from her husband", explained the deed to her, and recorded that she "declared that she had willingly executed the same and does not wish to retract it."

Newton died in December 1870. When his estate was divided in February 1872 she received the widow's third of $2,500. She lived on for twelve years and died on 27 February 1883, aged 85 years, 6 months and 11 days. She is buried beside Newton in the Manlius Methodist Episcopal cemetery, under a stone that reads PLEASANT, Wife of N. Furr. A photograph of her in old age, seated in a dark dress with a white collar and cap, is kept by the family.

Family accounts give her birthplace as Loudoun County.

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Cite: Heirology, "Pleasant Matthews (1797-1883)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/pleasant-furr-1797-1883-4c695b.