{{Short description|British colonial official}} {{Use American English|date=December 2016}} {{Use mdy dates|date=December 2016}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = His Excellency <!-- EDITORS NOTE: Please do not change the British honorific prefix as it would be historically inaccurate. Thank you. --> | name = Matthew Rowan | office = Governor of North Carolina<br />{{small|Acting}} | term_start = 1 February 1753 | term_end = 1 November 1754 | monarch = George II | preceded = Nathaniel Rice (acting) | succeeded = Arthur Dobbs | birth_place = County Antrim, Ireland | death_date = April 1760 }} '''Matthew Rowan''' (died April 1760) was a British colonial official who was the acting governor of North Carolina from 1753 to 1754.
== Biography == Matthew Rowan was born in County Antrim, Ireland, but the date of his birth remains unknown. He was the son of Reverend John Rowan and the former Margaret Stewart and had eight brothers and three sisters. Although it is not known when Rowan emigrated to North Carolina, it is recorded that he lived in Bath in 1726, serving as a church warden. In addition, he was a merchant and shipbuilder in the colony. An affidavit of about 1729 notes that Rowan was sent to the colony to build one or two ships for some persons in Dublin and that he "is now run away with one of them loaded with enumerated goods contrary to the Acts of Trade." Rowan joined the assembly in 1727 and the executive council in 1731, where he worked between 1734 and his death in 1760. In 1735, Rowan worked in the survey of the boundary line between North and South Carolina with other men, being appointed surveyor-general of North Carolina.
He was appointed President of the Council and acting governor of North Carolina in 1753, following the death of governor Nathaniel Rice. He held this post for one year until the arrival of Governor Arthur Dobbs at New Bern in 1754. After that, Rowan retired to his plantation in Brunswick County, although he continued to serve as member of the Council.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lewis |first1=J.D. |title=Matthew Rowan Acting Governor of North Carolina Province 1753 to 1754 |url=https://www.carolana.com/NC/Royal_Colony/mrowan.html |website=Carolana.com |access-date=24 April 2026}}</ref> Rowan died in April 1760.<ref name=NCPedia>{{cite web|last=Wegner|first=Ansley|title=Rowan, Matthew|url=https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/rowan-matthew|work=NCPedia.org|publisher=North Carolina Office of Archives and History|accessdate=7 December 2012}}</ref> He is buried on the Brunswick County plantation.<ref>{{cite web |title=Matthew Rowan (B-27) |url=https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2023/12/05/matthew-rowan-b-27 |website=North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources |access-date=24 April 2026}}</ref>
He married Elizabeth, the widow of his brother John, in 1742, although they had no children (while she had four daughters). Rowan did father one child, John Rowan, with Jane Stubbs; he acknowledged his paternity and remembered John in his will. Rowan mainly lived in the Lower Cape Fear, near the Brunswick County community (modern Northwest), where he lived in North Carolina.
In 1753, the area that had previously been the northern part of Anson County was formed into Rowan County, named in his honor.<ref name=NCPedia/>
==Wreck of the Martha and Eliza== Purportedly, Rowan was the captain of an unregistered 90 foot 2-masted ship named ''Martha & Eliza'' which was wrecked on Grand Manon Island in the Bay of Fundy in 1741 carrying Presbyterian Irish expatriates. He abandoned the survivors but later returned to recover the cargo from the wrecked ship. A complaint in the Massachusetts archives states that, “At the time the sloop and schooner came for us, the hands aboard — our mate and others — for reasons best known to themselves, were quite unwilling to land or search for these, though we had seen them that very day on the shore searching for food and eating rockweed, and so left them. Of these we can give no further account.”
The survivors asked for help: “Now, besides these already mentioned that came first aboard the vessel at Londonderry, there is but 48 of us know. In brief, many died at sea and many after we came to land, the corps [corpses]of which lie many of them on the shore, through weakness we were not able to interr them.” The rescue vessel took 48 people to Pleasant Point in Cushing, and Captain Rowan and his henchmen stripped survivors of whatever money and possessions they still had, as payment for their rescue. The complaint continues saying that even some of their clothes were taken, “to leave us almost naked.”
But the Cushing residents, many of whom had come from Northern Ireland themselves, were warm and generous to the new arrivals. It being winter, however, they couldn’t support 48 newcomers for long, so they sent an appeal to provincial officials, signed by Alexander Campbell and William Lunnen. The letter clearly informed them of Rowan’s abuses, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives wasted no time in authorizing provisions for the survivors. A treasurer for Massachusetts Bay Colony reported 250 pounds spent for “sundry provisions sent in the County Sloop to the poor sufferers that were cast ashore at St. George.”<ref>{{cite web|last=Cartwright|first=Steve|title="Grand Design" lured 18th century immigrants to a tragic end|date=March 2006 |url=http://www.workingwaterfrontarchives.org/2006/03/01/grand-design-lured-18th-century-immigrants-to-a-tragic-end|publisher=The Working Waterfront Archives|accessdate=14 September 2018}}</ref> While Massachusetts Bay Colony records indicate provisions were sent to the town of Cushing, no accounting of them being received and distributed has been found.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tirrell |first1=Robert W. |title=The Wreck of the Martha and Eliza |journal=New England Historical and Genealogical Register |date=July 1957 |volume=111 |page=218}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
{{s-start}} {{s-gov}} {{Succession box | title=Governor of North Carolina<br />{{small|Acting}} | before=Nathaniel Rice<br />{{small|Acting}} | after=Arthur Dobbs | years=1753–1754 }} {{s-end}}
{{Governors of North-Carolina (1712–1776)|state=expanded}} {{Portal bar|Biography|British Empire|North Carolina|Northern Ireland}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowan, Matthew}} Category:1760 deaths Category:Governors of the Province of North Carolina Category:Members of the North-Carolina Provincial Council Category:People from County Antrim Category:Presidents of the North-Carolina Provincial Council Category:Year of birth missing