Author: Mathies, James
Biography:
MATHIES, James (c 1776-1830: Wisbey)
Born in New York State to parents of Scottish descent (names unknown), James was one of a family of nine children who scattered when their parents died in 1795. Two of his brothers left a mark in the historical record, the portraitist John Lee Douglas (J. L. D.) Mathies and the fraudster Robert Mathies who passed himself off in the 1830s as "the Prophet Matthias." James Mathies, "a mechanical inventor, a poet, and something of a drinker" (Johnson) died in Rochester; his will indicates that he left a widow and seven children in Vermont. His brother J. L. D. prepared his poems for posthumous publication with a biographical notice. (Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., "J. L. D. Mathies, Western New York Artist," New York History 39:2 [1958] 133-50; Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias [1995] 85-6)