Anna Maria Matthews (1838 - 1913)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Anna's lifetime.

In 1838, in the year that Anna Maria Matthews was born, on February 24th, Representatives William J. Graves (Kentucky) and Jonathan Cilley (Maine) fought a duel with rifles. They faced off at 94 yards. Cilley was hit on Graves' third try - in the femoral artery - and bled to death on the dueling field. The Panic of 1837 and Jackson's presidency had caused an extremely partisan Congress and the duel was a result.

In 1857, she was 19 years old when on December 16th, a 7.0 earthquake struck the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies - Southern Italy. It had a maximum Mercalli intensity of 11 (Extreme) and killed about 10,000 people..

In 1870, by the time she was 32 years old, on January 26th, the state of Virginia rejoined the Union. On February 23rd, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union. On March 30th, Texas was readmitted to the Union. And on July 15th, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.

In 1897, she was 59 years old when in the January 22nd issue of "Engineering", the word "computer" was first used to refer to a mechanical calculation device. Previously - since the 17th century - the term computer meant "one who computes" and referred to human beings who worked with numbers.

In 1913, in the year of Anna Maria Matthews's passing, Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. It had previously taken 12 hours to assemble a whole vehicle - now it took only two hours and 30 minutes! Inspired by the production lines at flour mills, breweries, canneries and industrial bakeries, along with the disassembly of animal carcasses in Chicago’s meat-packing plants, Ford created moving belts for parts and the assembly line was born.