Sarah Mason Sandridge Matthews

Woman suffragettes (Rufus W. Holsinger Digital Collection, UVA Special Collections Library) 1915-04-03

Sarah Mason Sandridge Matthews (November 20 1881–May 11 1963), woman suffrage activist, was born in Charlottesville.

The daughter of Joseph Franklin Sandridge and Sarah Ann Biggers Sandridge. Known to her family and friends as Sadie, she attended local public schools. Sandridge married Lewis Carleton Matthews in North Carolina in 1913. They had three daughters, one of whom died as a child after being struck by a car. Matthews divorced her husband on grounds of desertion in 1930.

Before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 Matthews took part in organizing citizenship classes to prepare women for their anticipated new responsibilities as voters. Following ratification she continued to be involved in local and regional politics. From 1922 to 1925 she was a vice president of the Virginia League of Women Voters, and in 1924 she was president of the league's Norfolk chapter, which that year hosted the annual state convention.

After separating from her husband, Matthews moved back to Charlottesville about 1926. She continued her civic engagement, sitting on the board of directors of the Virginia League of Women Voters in 1930 and chairing the mental health committee for the state and Albemarle County leagues during the 1950s. In 1936 she participated in the historical records survey of the Equal Suffrage League, a statewide effort to document Virginia's suffrage efforts. She joined the Charlottesville Business and Professional Women's Club, serving as its president for the 1943–1944 term. In 1941 she published an article in the Virginia Business and Professional Woman to encourage women to organize and participate in the war effort. In a speech at the club's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1949, Matthews commended women's progress in professional spheres while also urging them to increase their involvement in politics. She was chair of the statewide organization's legislative committee in 1954.

Matthews became the medical records librarian (later registered record librarian) for the University of Virginia Hospital in 1926. In 1955, four years after her retirement, Matthews began working on a history of the hospital, which she published in 1961 as University of Virginia Hospital: Its First Fifty Years.

Sarah Mason Sandridge Matthews suffered a stroke and died in a Charlottesville nursing home on May 11, 1963. She was buried in the city's Riverview Cemetery.