Cradled between Chesapeake Bay, Mobjack Bay, the Piankatank River, and the North River, Mathews has more than 200 miles of shoreline. This lovely, rural bit of Tidewater originally delineated in the 1690s as Kingston Parish, later a part of Gloucester, became an independent county in 1791. It is named for a prominent American Revolutionary officer, General Thomas Mathews of Norfolk, who supported the enabling legislation as Speaker of the House of Delegates.

From Cricket Hill, overlooking Gwynns Island, Continental sharpshooters under General Andrew Lewis drove from American shores the last of Virginias Royal Governors, Lord Dunmore. The site of this battle of July 9, 1776 is a designated National Historic Landmark. The New Point Comfort Lighthouse at the entrance of Mobjack Bay, built in 1805, is now unused, but was restored by the County in the 1970s as a National Historic Landmark.

Other state and national registered landmarks include the Countys splendid Courthouse on the Village Green as well as several privately owned estates, such as Hesse, home of the Armistead family, who intermarried with the Lee and Washington families; and Poplar Grove, birthplace of Captain Sally Tompkins, C.S.A., the only woman commissioned in the Confederate Army. The Poplar Grove estate also includes a tide-operated grist mill which reportedly milled grain for Washington's Continental Army.