The Hike to Mattoon

•May 14, 2025•

by Janet Roney

When I was a child, my Grandmother Shuman told me that when my great-grandmother Mary McPheeters Shuman was a little girl playing in her yard, Abraham Lincoln once waved at her as he rode by on the old Charleston Road that passed through our family farm. That story and others inspired my life-long interest in local history and old trails. 

In the summer of 1982, I suggested that our family hike the old Charleston Road from our home north of Sullivan to Mattoon. Our son, Clay, was twelve and daughter, Cynthia, just nine, but we were used to short hikes. On nice summer evenings, the kids and I, plus our dog, Ernie Bob, often walked down the road to visit Roger’s 92-year-old Grandfather Hall, about two miles, round trip. 

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