"An Illustrated History of Whitman County, state of Washington." San Francisco:
W. H. Lever, 1901.  p. 391.
 
JOHN E. C. MATLOCK

     A resident of Whitman county since the year of its organization, and ever a
forceful factor in its development and an active participant in its political
affairs, the man whose name initiates this article is certainly worthy of due
recognition in a work of this kind, and it is with pleasure that we are able to
accord him representation herein.
     Mr. Matlock is a native of Tennessee, born May 21, 1836. When two years old
he was taken by his parents to Crawford county, Missouri, where the years of his
early youth were passed and his education acquired. When the time came for him
to inaugurate independent action he turned to the basic art of agriculture and
continued to till the soil of his native state until 1871. In that year he came
to Whitman county and filed on land contiguous to the Palouse river, giving
himself diligently to the cultivation and improvement of the same until 1878,
when he took a homestead on Dry creek north of Colfax. He followed farming and
stock-raising there uninterruptedly and successfully until 1892, but in that
year he again sold out, going to Adams county. After spending three years in the
stock business there he returned to Whitman county and located on a place seven
miles south of Thornton, where we now find him, though he is not, himself, very
actively engaged in any form of farming, having gone into practical retirement.
     Mr. Matlock still, however, retains his old public-spirited interest in
politics and in all local concerns, giving the attention which every good
citizen should to the affairs of state and nation.
     In the state of Missouri, on January 22, 1864, our subject married Mary A.
Davis, a native of Tennessee, and as issue of their union they have had nine
children: James R., on the Nez Perce reservation: Henry P.; Minnie C.; Alvin;
and Myrtle Ivy, living: also John H., Mary I., Maggie M. and Malvin M.,
deceased.
    When Mr. Matlock first settled in the Palouse country the nearest family to
his lived thirteen miles away. Walla Walla and Lewiston were the trading points.
The danger from Indians was sometimes very real, and he twice sent his family
away on account of the savages.
 

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Submitted to the Washington Biographies Project in July 2009 by Diana Smith.
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.