Matson, Robert (Mateson)

Born: 1796-01-XX Bourbon County, Kentucky

Died: 1859-01-26 Kentucky

Alternate name: Mateson

Matson grew up in Bourbon County, where his father owned enslaved people and thousands of acres of land. Robert Matson served as a lieutenant in the Kentucky militia during the War of 1812. By 1830, Matson owned his own farm and nineteen enslaved people in Bourbon County. He won election to the Kentucky House of Representatives representing Bourbon County in 1832 and again in 1834. Between 1835 and 1842, Matson purchased 440 acres of federal land in Coles (present-day Douglas County) and Edgar counties, Illinois. As early as 1836, he lived in Illinois, and in 1840, he lived in Edgar County. Matson also retained property in Bourbon County, where, according to the 1840 Census, he still owned five enslaved people. In 1847, Abraham Lincoln represented Matson in the controversial Matson Slave Case. In 1850, Matson was living and farming in Fulton County, Kentucky, and owned real estate valued at $3,500 and fourteen enslaved people.

Gravestone, Matson Family Cemetery, Hickman, KY; Charles B. Heinemann, comp., First Census of Kentucky, 1790 (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1965), 66; Willard R. Jillson, Kentucky Land Grants, (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1971), 1:86; Anderson C. Quisenberry, Kentucky in the War of 1812 (Frankfort: Kentucky State Historical Society, 1915), 179; U.S. Census Office, Fifth Census of the United States (1830), Bourbon County, KY, 353; Richard H. Collins, rev., History of Kentucky: By the Late Lewis Collins (Covington, KY: Collins, 1882), 2:771-72; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Edgar County, 291:93, Douglas County, 291:1, 91, 93, 166, 234, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Edgar County, IL, 102; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Bourbon County, KY, 306; Matson v. Bryant et al., Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=135678; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Fulton County, KY, 135; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedule, Fulton County, KY, 929.