Matsudaira was born in
Pennsylvania on September 13, 1885, as the son of a Japanese father,
Tadaatsu, and an American mother, Carrie Sampson. He was a descendant of the
Fujii-Matsudaira clan. After his father's death, he lived with his maternal grandparents in
Virginia. On May 1, 1912, Matsudaira filed for U.S. Patent 1,111,912 concerning the functions of a thermometric fire-detector. The patent was granted to him on September 29, 1914. In 1925, Matsudaira sent a letter to the
Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C., asking whether he was related to
Tsuneo Matsudaira, the
Japanese Ambassador to the United States at the time. Matsudaira was elected as the mayor of
Edmonston, Maryland, in the summer of 1927. The election reportedly made him the first Asian American mayor in the United States. He was re-elected as mayor of Edmonston in 1943. == References ==