Otto VanMatre, one of Jackson township's well known and substantial agriculturists and landowners, is a native Hoosier and has been a resident of Indiana all his life. Mr. VanMatre was born on a farm in Madison county, this state, December 14, 1873, and is a son of Andrew and Louisa (Brown) VanMatre, who were well established farming people in that county. Andrew VanMatre was a Virginian by birth, born in that section of the Old Dominion now included in West Virginia. He came to Indiana in 1864 and ever afterward remained a resident of this state, becoming a farmer and landowner in Madison county. He and his wife were the parents of six children, four of whom are still living, the subject of this sketch having a brother, Ozro VanMatre, and two sisters, Laura and Etta.
Reared on the home farm in Madison county. Otto VanMatre received his schooling in the schools of that county and remained at home until he was twenty-six years of age, when he bought a forty acre farm in that county and began working "on his own." In 1901 he sold that place and came to Jay county and bought an eighty-acre farm in Jackson township, the place on which he is now living. Since taking possession of that place Mr. VanMatre has made numerous improvements on the same and now has an excellent farm plant.
In 1898 Otto VanMatre was united in marriage to Olive Hogg, who was born in West Virginia, and to this union seven children have been born, Mildred, Marion, Robert, Frieda, Howard, Horace and Virginia, all of whom are at home save Mildred, the first born, who married William McCroskey, an oil man, and is living near Torrent, Ky. Mr. and Mrs. McCroskey have one child, a daughter, Margaret McCroskey. The VanMatre's have a pleasant home on rural mail route No.2 out of Portland. Mr. VanMatre is a Democrat and a member of the local lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at Portland, and he and his wife are members of Union Chapel.
SOURCE: Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II, pp.238-239. Transcribed by Eloine Chesnut
Buried in Gravel Hill Cemetery