Last week I wrote about Wilmot Brookings, our town’s undeserving namesake.
That’s just my opinion. I’ll let you decide.
To help you, I want you to meet George Mathews, who would have been a very deserving town namesake.
Mathews was a prominent local attorney, an involved local citizen and our first mayor. He was also the last Dakota Territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress.
He did more for Brookings in a day than Judge Brookings did in his life and career as a railroad man and town developer. His name is our town’s name because of his wealthy friends who helped him locate railroad towns out here on the flatlands.
Unfortunately, these railroad barons named towns after each other, each other’s wives and each other’s children, and maybe their dogs.
Judge Brookings visited Brookings once in his life. In his will, he asked to be buried in South Dakota but named Yankton as the place, not Brookings.
Mathews, on other hand, was a real supporter and fan of Brookings. He and his law partner, John Scobey, arrived in Brookings County in 1879. Scobey, as you may know, served in the Dakota Territorial. Legislature and was successful in bringing SDSU, then the Dakota Agricultural College, to town.
Mathews was born in Potsdam, New York, in 1852 and earned a law degree from the University of Iowa in 1878, first practicing in Corning, Iowa.
After moving to Brookings, his talents were widely known. In 1884, he became the prosecuting attorney of the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Dakota Territory.
In 1887, he was elected a member of the Territorial Council and served as its president. He served on the commission that selected Bismarck the new capitol of Dakota Territory after Yankton lost out.
By a margin of 300,000 votes, he was elected the territory’s delegate to the U.S. Congress and was the last delegate before the territory was divided into two states.
Mathews served as the first mayor of the newly “incorporated” Brookings in 1897. Before that, he served with his brother-in-law, Horace Fishback, Sr., on the un-incorporated city council.
After becoming mayor, he guided the city’s very first resolution through the council decreeing that shade trees should be planted. He was instrumental in starting the city’s opera house, the library, the city utilities and many other projects we now enjoy.
He was mayor for 10 terms.
He married Cora Thomas of West Union, Iowa, in 1881. They built the house still at 725 Fourth St. Cora died in 1889. Mathews later married Bertha Van Dusen of Prentice, Wisconsin, a sister of Mrs. Horace Fishback, in 1892, and they built the house in which Bob and Pat Fishback now reside.
In 1892 Mathews left Brookings for Chicago to become chief legal counsel for the Walter A. Wood Harvester Company. But he and his family missed Brookings, so they left Chicago and returned in 1895.
In his declining years and in ill health, he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived with his daughter until his death on April 19, 1941.
At his request, he was brought back to Brookings and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
George Mathews was the real deal. He set the course for what is Brookings today.
If you’d like to comment, email the author at cfcecil@swiftel.net.
