Sampson Mathews

Who is Sampson Mathews?

Sampson Mathews was an 18th-century American soldier, legislator, and college founder in the colony of Virginia.

As a soldier he participated in three major wars. He served with George Washington in the Virginia provincial militia on Braddock's Expedition of the French and Indian War; he was commissary for Virginia militia in the Battle of Point Pleasant of Lord Dunmore's War; and he was lieutenant colonel of Virginia militia in the American Revolutionary War, leading the American defense against Benedict Arnold's January 1781 invasion of Richmond, Virginia and fighting at the decisive Siege of Yorktown.

In politics he was a delegate to the Virginia Convention and a member of the inaugural Virginia State Senate, of which body he was a member from 1776-1781 and 1790-1792, representing Augusta, Rockingham, Rockbridge, Shenandoah, and Pendleton counties. He toured the western frontier as a representative for the United States Congress to fortify the colonial border from Indian attacks, and he oversaw shipbuilding efforts for the Continental Navy's Virginia fleet at Warwick.

He was a founding trustee of Liberty Hall, when it was made into a college in 1776.