Oconee County, GA Politics

Daniel Johnson Matthews, proud scion of several pre-revolution pioneer Georgia families (Johnson, Medlock, Chandler on his mother’s side and Blackshear, Hamilton, Floyd on his father’s) left this world November 29,2001 hoping for an all time great family reunion with those foregone folks.      Fifth generation to live on the family’s Druid Hills acreage he was probably the county’s oldest to dwell in one spot – certainly Druid Hills which the family preceded by several generations and helped bring about by sale of some of the original farm (bought from a Revolutionary war   widow named Cosby). Dan’s mother, Antoinette Johnson Matthews, was Georgia’s first independent nursery school/kindergarten operator and taught many of Atlanta’s elite along with her son.   He went from her Out-of-Doors school on Oakdale to Druid Hills, then WW-II years in uniform (Charlottesville grey, not khakis) at GMC in Milledgeville.   Entering Emory University at 16, it didn’t...

Daniel Johnson Matthews Senior 1930 - 2010 My father Daniel Johnson Matthews, Senior had obituaries ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Des Moines Register newspapers today, and we spared no expense in publishing those memorials. They are not cheap either, as one of the last true functions of a newspaper is to hold the newsprint in your hand, to clip out a column or picture of a long lost loved one or memory as a last vestige of a gone by era. While no one except my bosses of work have really asked, he did not want a ceremony or memorial service, and I have pondered his reasons both requests the weeks before and the week after his passing this last Monday in November on the hilltop in his Druid Hills family homestead that once stretched from the current location of Callanwolde to that where Scott Boulevard and North Decatur bisect in Decatur. If you would like to read about the street called Oakdale Road , there remains an e-book version of that which my grandmother...

MATTHEWS, DANIEL JOHNSON, SR.   Daniel Johnson Matthews, Sr., a former Des Moines resident, died at his home in Atlanta, Georgia on November 29, 2010. He was 80 years old.    He was born on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1930, at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.    He was the first child of Antoinette Johnson Matthews and William Collins Matthews.  Dan attended the Out-Of-Doors School on Oakdale Road, the first private nursery school in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by his mother Antoinette Johnson Matthews.    He attended the Druid Hills School in Atlanta through the 7 th   Grade, and spent World War II in uniform at the Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, Georgia.    He studied at Emory University his freshman year, the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia, and graduated from the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia with a degree in Journalism.    He served in the Army Reserves.    Dan ...