In 1754 she had entered a convent of English-speaking Discalced Carmelites in modern-day Belgium and was elected prioress there twenty years later.
Mathews (sometimes spelled "Matthews") was born in 1732 to a Catholic family in the English Province of Maryland in their North American colonies.
Her much younger brother William Matthews (1770-1854) later became known as a prominent Roman Catholic priest and educator in Washington, DC.
[3] In 1754 Mathews went to Europe to join the English-speaking Discalced Carmelites in Hoogstraet in the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium).
In 1831 the nuns were ordered by the bishop to move their congregation across the Chesapeake Bay to the larger city of Baltimore.