(1835 - 1885)
Home State: Pennsylvania
Education: Amherst College
Command Billet: Battery Commander
Branch of Service: Artillery
Before Antietam
He'd been a student at Amherst in the class of 1859, but did not graduate with them. By then a 25 year old teacher at Pine Grove in Schuylkill County, he enlisted on 23 April as First Sergeant of Company D, 10th Pennsylvania Infantry for 3 months' service, to July 1861. He then enrolled in Harrisburg on 6 July 1861 and mustered there two days later as Captain of Battery F, First Pennsylvania Light Artillery.
On the Campaign
He commanded the battery in Maryland.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Major of the regiment on 11 March (or April) 1863 and was discharged for disability on 18 July 1864.
References & notes
His service from Bates1 and the Card File,2 also as Ezra W. Mathews. Personal details from family genealogists, the Register of the [MOLLUS] Commandery of the State of Pennsylvania (1887), and A List of the Names of all the Students connected with Amherst College (1903). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph sold by University Archives in 2021.
He married Amelia Charlotte Benham (1841-1869) and she died on the birth of their daughter Amelia Benham Matthews (1869-1943). He married again, Mary Iungerich (1837-1916) in November 1874 and they had two sons.
Birth
11/17/1835; Eastford, CT
Death
11/08/1885; burial in Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA
1 Bates, Samuel Penniman, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, Harrisburg: State of Pennsylvania, 1868-1871 [AotW citation 29392]
2 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Adjutant-General, Pennsylvania Civil War Veterans' Card File, 1861-1866, Published <2005, first accessed 01 July 2005, <http://www.digitalarchives.state.pa.us/archive.asp?view=ArchiveIndexes&ArchiveID=17> [AotW citation 29393]