McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
This article is dedicated to the memory of Hubert Mattingly, longtime historian and educator who died on May 30,2004.
Hubert Mattingly was born in a log cabin on Rattlesnake Hill in the southwestern section of McLean County in1905. That same year his father built a store with a dwelling house next to it in the Faith community and moved his family from the hill.
Hubert attended Adams one-room school and Sacramento High School. He received an A.A. Degree from Cumberland College, B.A. and M.A. Degrees from Western University and an Educational Specialist Degree from the University of Colorado.
He married Frances Williams and they both taught in McLean County before World War II. They have a daughter and son-in-law Linda Jane and Sam Jarvis.
I met “Mr. Mattingly” when he came as principal and teacher for Island School in 1935. He was the eighth grade teacher. He was the first male teacher that my friends and I had and we were somewhat in awe of him and his instructions soon let us know we were there to learn, especially history, geography and spelling.
His beautiful handwriting filled the boards with “fill in the blank” questions that were copied daily into notebooks. We studied on our own to learn the correct information for those blanks. The notebooks were filled with Kentucky history, US history and world history.
A study of the globe and the making of maps of many areas taught us much about geography. And we had spelling contests weekly, as did most of the schools of that era.
He shared with the students some of his experiences, telling us of riding a horse from his home in Poplar Grove to high school in Sacramento. He was proud that one year he sold more magazines that anyone in the school and was awarded a fountain pen, the only student in the school to own one.
We were in the throes of the depression and he spoke of the poor house that was near his home, urging us to learn and work hard to make a better life for ourselves. He said, “You don’t ever want to be in the poor house!”
The summer of 1935 he attended the World’s Fair in Chicago and told the class of the wonderful things he had seen. He had seen television for the first time. He said, “One of these days, in the not too distant future, you will sit in your home and look at a big box with a screen and see what is going on all over the United States, perhaps over the world.” That was hard to believe at that time.
Mr. Mattingly left Island and the following year began teaching at Sacramento High School. He sponsored the senior class the year I graduated there.
In the World War II draft Mr. Mattingly and Alvin Rickard who had been his student left Calhoun together on November 7, 1942 to become soldiers in the defense of our country. From that time on Mr. Mattingly became Hubert, a friend. Through the war years Alvin and I corresponded with him.
Following service he located in Owensboro, Kentucky where he served as principal of Benjamin Franklin School from 1948 until he retired. After retirement he continued his interest in history, studying, writing and lecturing.
In 2001, President Jim Hansford contacted him to write about Sacramento High School basketball. He went to work and gathered the material needed, then ask me to help with it. I was honored to work with him. Several times while we worked on the book I reminded him that I was not a writer and he would say, “Just remember, who, what, when, how, why and where and you will do OK.”
He wrote the only history of McLean County that the museum can find and we are fortunate to have a copy. As the county celebrates its 150th Anniversary we pay tribute to historian and friend Hubert Mattingly whose obituary included the phrase, “he enjoyed reading, McLean County history and traveling.