Matra Westerfield Blackshear is the daughter of Henry Permelia and Minnie (Cunningham) Westerfield of Lawrence County, Arkansas. She married Jesse Thomas Blackshear on 30 Dec 1916 in Lawrence County. Matra and Jesse Blackshear had fourteen children, nine of which grew up and were married. She remembered a time when she was a small girl and her parents were making a short trip to a nearby town that it was winter time and the river was completely frozen over. Her father drove the team/wagon/family over the river on the ice. She remembered that the few times she had a date with a boy that her father followed along behind with a lantern with a watchful eye.

At the early age of seventeen she went to work in a boarding house where she was to be the cook. They asked her to "cook biscuits" on her first day .... and she did even though she had never done this before. While working at the boarding house she met her husband, Jesse Thomas Blackshear. She was working outside when he walked by the boarding house. He asked her "how about a date tonight" to which she replied "You just come by and see what happens". Jesse Blackshear had three children by his first marriage, they were ages six, three, and two. He and Matra were married while sitting in a buggy in Lawrence County, Arkansas. Jesse had left the three children with a relative while they were married. When they picked up the children and returned to Jesse's home, he sat the children down on the bed facing Matra and said "This is your mother, I don't want to ever hear you call her anything but that". It took the oldest child (a boy) two or three weeks to adjust, but the other two children called her "momma" from the first day. When they were getting ready for bed that night, the youngest child said "Momma, I want to sleep with you and daddy"

She was a dutiful wife and mother and dearly loved her children and zealously guarded them as they "grew up"