• Name given as Ezra Matthew Ormsby.5751, p 2

• A younger brother, Matthew E., was one of the pioneer settlers of San Diego County, living about 12 miles east of the present city of Oceanside, where he operated a farm.5881, p 5

• Matthew was born a few months following the death of his father, after whom he was named. He was reared in Pittsburgh or the immediate vicinity. Although he studied both law and medicine for a time, he did not practice either profession. In 1849, at the age of 22, he joined the gold rush emigrants to California, making the trip by boat via the Isthmus of Panama. There he joined his three older brothers (Maj. William, Dr. John S. and Lemuel P. Ormsby) and his brother-in-law (J. K. Trumbo) in various enterprises on K Street in Sacramento.
During or prior to 1855, he returned to the family home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shortly afterward, he attended a southern Academy, where he met and married, Augusta Abigail Bradford, of Alabama. They settled in the Brazos River region of Texas and engaged in the cattle business. His oldest daughter, Libby Ormsby, was born there in 1857, as was his eldest son, Ezra B. Ormsby in 1861.
Matthew Ezra Ormsby joined the Confederate Army, with a commission in the Commissary Department, and was with the Army of General Robert E. Lee, which surrendered at Appomattox in 1865.
In May 1868, Matthew Ormsby and his family, including his wife’s sister Cellist Bradford, joined an emigrant train organized in northwestern Arkansas and made the overland trip to southern California. A portion of this emigrant train went on to Los Angeles. Others, including Matthew Ezra Ormsby and his family became pioneer settlers of northern San Diego County.
In 1878 he served as a member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and is listed on the records as Ezra O. or E. O. Ormsby5883, pp 1-2