Early Life
Matthew Deady was born near Easton, Talbot County, Maryland, on May 12, 1824. His parents were Daniel Deady and the former Mary Ann McSweeny. His father was born in Ireland on September 25, 1794, and married McSweeny on June 10, 1823. Matthew was the oldest of five children in the family. He began his education at the school where his father was a teacher, remaining at that school until the age of twelve. In 1828, the family relocated from the Baltimore, Maryland, area to Wheeling, Virginia, (now West Virginia). The Deadys also lived for brief periods of time in Cincinnati, Ohio, Rodney, Missouri, and Covington, Kentucky.
In Wheeling, his father was employed as a teacher and principal at the Lancasterian Academy. On May 31, 1834, his mother died while the family was living in Wheeling. Deady’s family was split up, with Matthew sent back to Baltimore for two years. In Baltimore, he lived with an uncle and grandfather while working in a store. Deady then returned to Wheeling to live with his father while attending school and working in a local music shop. In the Spring of 1837 he moved just across the Ohio River to the state of Ohio where his father had purchased a farm in Beaver Township.
Matthew Deady spent the next four years working for his father on the family farm, engaged in manual labor, while also reading extensively in his spare time. On February 17, 1841, he left home after a disagreement with his father and moved to Barnesville, Ohio. For four years he lived with the family of John Kelly, working as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Beginning in 1843, Deady attended Barnesville Academy, continuing his education there until four months beyond the time that his blacksmith apprenticeship ended. The apprenticeship had paid for the first six months of school. At the school he earned a certificate that allowed him to become a teacher on July 7, 1845, from his instructor Nathan R. Smith.
After graduating, Deady began teaching to pay off a debt incurred for his education, and began to read law. He read law in St. Clairsville, Ohio, under the guidance of judge and former Congressman William Kennon. Deady passed the Ohio bar on October 26, 1847, and began practicing law in St. Clairsville at the office of Henry Kennon. He remained there until on April 17, 1849, he began his overland journey over the Oregon Trail to the newly created Oregon Territory.
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