Anthony J. Mattson was born on December 23, 1818, in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. His father was a Scottish immigrant. The family moved to Erie County, Pennsylvania, around 1822, and his mother died around 1825. According to an early biographer, he left home at the age of 12 and “traveled quite extensively—to the east as far as New York and Philadelphia; south as far as Vicksburg, and west to St. Louis.” He settled in Prophetstown, Illinois, around 1838, and he married Lucy Minchin there on April 10, 1840. Their daughter Alice was born on August 17, 1843, but she died on July 20, 1844.

 

He worked as a wheelwright in Prophetstown, and in 1848, he received an appointment as a local postmaster. By 1850, he owned $500 of real estate. He opened a store in 1852, and he entered the banking business three years later. In the 1850s, one biographer noted, he “devoted much time and effort toward securing the construction of a railway to Prophetstown, so as to give it an outlet to Chicago and St. Louis.” He travelled abroad in 1858, and his passport described him as 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with “nearly black” hair and black eyes.

 

He served as a county enrolling officer during the Civil War. In December 1862, a local writer insisted that Mattson had “perfected his labors, after a careful and most thorough prosecution of the work.” In September 1863, he attended a “grand mass meeting” of the “Unconditional Union men of the State of Illinois.” The delegates declared their determination to “sustain the Government in its endeavors to crush out treason [and] preserve the integrity of the Union at any cost of treasure and blood.”

 

He remained in Prophetstown and worked as a banker and real estate dealer. By 1870, he owned $27,700 of real estate and $22,500 of personal property. In 1872, he became the cashier of the First National Bank of Prophetstown. He also served on the State Board of Agriculture. His health declined in the 1880s. In the final days of his life, he reportedly had “visionary communings with people who were long dead. He claimed to see and talk with persons who have been dead for twenty years.” He died in Prophetstown on November 17, 1886.

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