From the Hinds County Gazette-September 16, 1874

Matthew Broome

UTICA-Died at his residence near Utica on Tuesday the 28th day of July, 1874, Matthew Broome in the seventy-ninth year of his age.
    Mr. Broome was born in Fairfield District, South Carolina, on January the 2nd, 1795, and came to this State among its early settlers in 1833. In his native Fairfield, the deceased intermarried with Miss Nancy Robinson, a near relative of the present Secretary of the Navy. She died and Mr. Broome, in 1837,  married Miss Elizabeth Brown, whom he leaves to mourn her irreparable loss. The deceased was the father of fifteen children-four by the first wife, eleven by the second marriage-nine of whom are living, but like nearly all large families, they are greatly scattered-some like their father in his early life have followed up the onward course of advancing civilization and made their homes among the pioneers of the far West, while others linger about the  parental homestead, a place to memory ever dear. Although Mr. Broome was ever a worthy exemplar of many of the noblest Christian virtues, yet it was only about four years prior to his demise that he first professed religion; at which time he joined the Methodist Church and ever since has remained stiffest in faith and his daily walk before the world has afforded abundant proof of a heart surrendered unreservedly to God through his faith and reliance in the propitiatory merits of a crucified but risen Savior. Ever an unfaltering believer in and supporter and advocate of Methodism, he continued to the last, a strong pillar of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Utica, and his last moments were characterized by the heavenly calm that evinced the truth of his profession and the sincerety of his hope of salvation. When the deceased first settled here in 1833, the lands upon which Utica with its suburban residences and luxuriant fields and gardens now stand-long ago the town was dubbed with its present nature-where a dense unbroken forest, the home of the red man and the haunt of the wild deer, and he often spoke feelingly of the great change that had taken place since his first settlement here. He lived to see the last of a large and creditable family grown to manhood. He was a man whose course in life rendered him universally popular and few men have lived perhaps as long in the same community with fewer enemies or more friends than Matthew Broome; And he has now gone down to the silent grave full of years and of honors, where his insensate form now reposes bard by the dwelling he first occupied and owned in Utica, almost in calling distance of those of his fond and devoted family who occupy and cluster around his last homestead on earth. No greater boon to those he has left behind could he ask than that they might closely imitate his earthly example, not only to his immediate family, but to all who knew him, of probity, sincerety, and fair dealing-a shining exemplitation and verification of the adage, that "an honest man is the noblest work of God", and the "our loss is His eternal gain." And while his desolate family sadly agonize, and sorrowing friend mourn their earthly calamity and loss, may their tears be staid, their lamentations hushed, and their sorrows softened, by knowledge that his eternal lot is already cast with the saints of God's Right Hand, where his soul will rejoice forever in the presence of Him "who tempteth the wind unto the shorn lamb."
W.O.C.

Matthew Broome was buried in the Broome family cemetery, sometimes called the Easterling/Easterland Cemetery in Utica, MS, along with much of his family.
 

 

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