But he wanted to get in. He wanted to be urbane and careless. He wanted to wear well-cut clothes. He wanted to be a gentleman.
— Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

Part 2
Who Was Blanche Dumont?

Miss Blanche Dumont operated a brothel in Guy Town, the red light district of Austin, Texas, from around 1877 until 1914. She became one of Austin’s most infamous and best-remembered madams. People still speak of seeing Dumont’s ghost near her former establishment. She was the mother of Wilson Matthews, the legendary Texas League umpire.

The origin and true identity of Blanche Dumont are lost to history. Even Wilson Matthews’ wife, Maude Huyck Matthews, did not know her provenance. When Maude filled out her husband’s death certificate in 1918, she gave her mother-in-law’s maiden name and place of birth as Unk. (unknown).

Wilson Matthews’ death certificate, September 2, 1918.

Dumont was born around 1850. The 1900 census records her birth month and year as November 1851. Other sources, which state her age but not her birth year, imply that she was born between 1841 and 1855.

The name Blanche Dumont may have been borrowed from a character in “A Hero of Romance,” a popular play based on the novel Le Roman d’un Jeune Homme Pauvre by Octave Feuillet. Other demimondes chose the same name: newspaper accounts record the arrests of women named Blanche Dumont or Dumond in Galveston and New Orleans.

The character of Blanche Dumont (center) in a scene from “A Hero of Romance.” Illustrated London News, 1868.

Dumont began working as a prostitute in Austin sometime after the Civil War. The 1870 census records Blanche Dumont, 21, living with two other young women, ages 19 and 22. All three women are working at home. The oldest woman lists her birthplace as Texas. The entry for Blanche Dumont, on the next row of the ledger, has a faint ditto mark in the Place of Birth column, indicating that she, too, was born in Texas. Dumont does not claim a parent of foreign birth.

1870 census for Austin, Texas. Headers and relevant entries (intervening rows removed).

After 1870, Dumont began refining her character and invented a fictitious backstory. In the 1880, 1900, and 1910 censuses (the 1890 census records were destroyed in a fire), Dumont claimed to have been born in England to English parents. Her son later displayed the same talent for self-invention, weaving a fantastic, continually shifting resumé out of whole cloth.

Around 1877, Dumont either gave birth to a son or adopted a boy. It was also around this time that she began operating her own brothel.

The June 1880 census shows Dumont keeping house on Austin’s Live Oak Street (probably 200 West Live Oak, at the corner of West Live Oak and Colorado). The ledger lists Blanche Dumont, four women, and a two-year-old boy named W.F. Mathews.

1880 census for Austin, Texas. Headers and relevant entries (intervening rows removed).

The census taker designated Dumont as the head of the household. Under Relationship of each person to the head of this family, W.F. Mathews is described as son.

The census records the boy’s birth location as Texas and states that his mother and father were also born there. Blanche Dumont’s birthplace, however, is given as England.

Mathews or Matthews was not the boy’s father’s name. Wilson Matthews’ death certificate lists his father as W. Wilson, born in Texas. The identity of W. Wilson is a mystery.

Matthews’ first name was probably William, the name under which he enrolled at Texas A&M as a 15-year-old freshman. He later began calling himself Wilson, apparently an homage to his father.

Dumont’s real name must have been Mathews or Matthews. Given that Maude Matthews did not know her mother-in-law’s maiden name, it was probably her married name. Dumont’s son inherited his mother’s legal name and her actual birthplace, rather than the name and fictitious birthplace of Miss Blanche Dumont, the character she portrayed in Guy Town.

Wilson Matthews had an odd manner of speaking. As an umpire, he pronounced OUT! as OOT! He once wrote a newspaper article in which he used the word noot – probably a phonetic spelling of nutte, German for prostitute. It suggests that Matthews and his mother may have been descended from the Germans who settled in Central Texas in the 1830s and 1840s.

Both Matthews and Dumont may have spoken with German accents, may even have spoken the Texas Deutsch dialect. In the unsophisticated world of Guy Town, Dumont parlayed her foreign-sounding speech into what her clients accepted as an English accent.

In the 1920 census, taken after she had abandoned Guy Town and was running a legitimate boarding house in Fort Worth, Dumont again claimed she was born in Texas. She gave her father’s birthplace as Texas and her mother’s as Tennessee. Her marital status was marked with a W, meaning widowed.

1920 census for Fort Worth, Texas. Headers and relevant entries (intervening rows removed).

By the time Dumont died in 1933, she had once again changed her origin story. Her death certificate recorded her birthplace as France. The names of her mother and father, and their birthplaces, are Unknown.

Blanche Dumont’s death certificate, February 20, 1933.

Based on the accumulated, conflicting information, we can hazard a guess at Dumont’s biography.

The woman who called herself Blanche Dumont was born in Texas around 1850. Her father was the child of Germans who settled in Texas in the early 1830s. Her mother, probably also German, was born in Tennessee. Dumont was married to a man named Mathews or Matthews and was widowed early. To support herself, she moved to Austin, turned to prostitution, and took on the character of an Englishwoman. Around 1877 she adopted a boy or gave birth to a son, retired from active prostitution, and began running a brothel. The boy’s father was named W. Wilson. Her son was Wilson Matthews, a minor league ballplayer and umpire.

The relationship between Blanche Dumont and Wilson Matthews must have been known during Matthews’ lifetime. It was probably common knowledge in Austin and a topic of gossip in newsrooms and saloons around the Texas League. Dumont no doubt counted many sportswriters and players among her clients. Some of the older hacks may have seen the boy trotting about the brothel. Journalists, though, especially in Texas, seemed protective of Matthews and never exposed his heritage until Dumont died, fifteen years after Matthews’ passing.

Dumont’s death made headlines all over Texas. She was memorialized, not as a once-famous madam, but as the mother of the still-famous umpire. Like her son, Dumont passed without a cent to her name and was buried in a grave marked only by a 3, her space in lot 2, section 8-H of Fort Worth’s Greenwood Cemetery.

Waco Times-Herald, February 18, 1933.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 18, 1933.