Adjoining the train station parking lot is a late 19th century wood-framed house with an over-sized “FOR RENT” sign on its side. You wouldn’t know by its understated demeanor, but the house is one of the last remnants of Germantown’s first — and only — mayor.

Before I get into the history, I need to acknowledge that Germantown is not and has never been incorporated as a city, so it has never really had an official mayor — But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t centers of power in the community built on economic and political influence. And from time to time, it is not uncommon for residents of areas like ours to dub one influential citizen the unofficial mayor.

The most prominent example of this is Henry “Mac” Mateny (pronounced ma-TEE-nee), a cattle dealer who lived in Germantown during the mid-20th century. In the early 1900s, Mac married the daughter of Robert Pumphrey, another prominent Germantowner. Pumphrey had built that house now in the train station parking lot and operated a blacksmith shop on the lower level. When he died, he left the house to his son who then passed it to his sister and brother in law. Mateny and his wife didn’t carry on the family business, but instead got into cattle sales.

He proved to be a very effective dealer, purchasing unwanted stock from local farmers and selling them out to ranchers in Chicago for a profit. Before they shipped out, he would graze his cattle on a hill overlooking his more expansive stockyard that ran along the railroad line. He was in business for nearly 40 years until the death of his wife in the early 1960s.

During this time, his business became powerful enough in the local agricultural economy that he was dubbed Mayor. It is said that he would “hold office” at the general store in town, where he could sit on the porch and smoke while listening to his “constituents.”

Although the title had no real power itself, it was a meaningful recognition of his contributions to the community. Since he moved in 1960, Germantown has grown into a far larger and more diverse area. Neighbors no longer know everyone else in town the way they used to — thusly, no consensus exists for who our unofficial mayor would be today. Several powerful business people, politicians, organizers, and non-profit executives live here, but no one person commands that kind of singular control over the economy any more. It seems unlikely that Germantown will every have another figure like Mateny, unless we did incorporate…