Education
University of Virginia.
Financier lawyer private sector banker
University of Virginia.
Alexander F. Mathews born on November 13, 1838 in Frankford, Greenbrier County, Virginia to Eliza (née Reynolds) and Mason Mathews. He enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1854 at the age of fifteen, earning a Masters of Arts at the university in two years. He returned to the University of Virginia School of Law in 1857, and in the same year was admitted to the Barometer
Mathews volunteered for the Confederate States Army on the outbreak of the American in 1861.
He was assigned to the 59th Virginia Infantry and received a commission of captain despite having no formal military training. Additionally, he served as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Henry A. Wise during Wise"s early campaigns.
He was relieved from duty with the 59th Virginia Infantry on June 22, 1863 and was appointed Inspector of Conscription for the 8th Congressional District of Virginia for the remainder of the war. He was appointed to the West Virginia University Board of Regents during that institution"s infancy, and served on the board from 1871-1881, also opening a law firm with brother Henry M. Mathews.
In 1871, with Adam C. Snydor and Homer A. Holt, he founded the first bank in Greenbrier County, the Bank of Lewisburg, which was until 1888 the only bank between Staunton, Virginia and Charleston, West Virginia.
He served as either the president or director of the bank until his death in 1906. He was president of the bank on its opening, and served in that capacity in the bank"s first year. He died on December 16, 1906 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was buried at the Old Stone Church in Lewisburg, West Virginia.
West Virginia Governor William A. MacCorkle, in Recollections of Fifty Years of West Virginia (1928), said of him:.
He was a Confederate States Army officer during the American, serving as aide-de-camp to General Henry A. Wise, and afterward a member of the West Virginia University Board of Regents during that institution"s early expansion, and a West Virginia banker. He was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.