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COMMUNITY CHARACTER
Village History In 1909 the town was given the name Winchell but for reasons unknown the name was never used. The village came by its name from a meeting with the founders and backers of the Rock Island Southern Railroad were meeting in the parlor of the Walsh home with a sales representative of the New York supply firm with the idea of placing a sizable order for railroad equipment and materials. Finally they proposed that if the salesman would give them a substantial discount they would name one of the towns on the contemplated railroad route for him. The offer was accepted and the gentleman kept their promise. The rolling stock salesman’s name was George Mather. As the town grew the rather unwieldy title “Village of Mater” was change to a more compact Mathersville. That was retained for many years as old postmarks affirm, but eventually postal authorities requested that the “S” in Mathersville be dropped as being redundant. The change went almost unnoticed and the Village is now Matherville. The town was laid out in 1909 and the first house was erected in 1910. The Village of Mather wasn’t incorporated until March, 1911. Fred Schroder, who along with William Caddy, opened Matherville’s first general business, “The Pioneer Merchants” and became the first postmaster of the new village. The Village was originally had two big mines that closed in 1923 and 1927 and Matherville nearly became another ghost town like the company owned mining camps before it; at Cable, the several Gilchrists, and Wanlock, when the mines petered out. Many of the families moved away, some to Alpha to work in the new Schuler mine, others to mining towns in Iowa. Several fine homes were sold and moved to nearby farms. Yet the advent of the Illinois hard road system inaugurated by Gov. Len Small and the opening of Route 67 (then Route 85), in the early 1930’s, saved the village Historic Photo Source: Pictorial Atlas of Mercer County 1983 by permitting workers to travel to jobs in the Ag industries of the then Tri Cities.
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