Maddox House was social center of town

The Maddox House on Gallatin Street was a social center of capital-era Vandalia,  and was known far and wide as one of the best hotels in the state.

Described as a "commodious lodging house," the Maddox House stood on the south side of the 400 block of Gallatin Street. It was torn down in the 1870s, and the J.W. Schenker building was erected on the lot. This site today is occupied by two downtown businesses – Sunshine House Health Foods and Liberty Trading.
Mary Maddox is described as an “inn keeper” on the 1850 Federal Census, with real estate valued at $1,000. She gave her age as 40 years, and told the census taker she had been born in Pennsylvania.
She was Mary Welch before her marriage to John F. Maddox on March 24, 1836, in Vandalia, with the Rev. S.P. Gorin, performing the ceremony. Six years later, John was dead and Mary had the sad task of filing guardianship papers for her children and seeing to the administration of his estate. At the time of his death, John was in business with George S. Willis, under the name of Willis and Maddox. Willis, who in 1836 was a tailor, co-administered the estate,  and a paper in the file indicates that Mary told the court she was ready to make her report, but Willis was not.
A sale was held Feb. 4, 1842, and among the items sold were beer pumps, a tobacco cutter, two tea chests, scales and weights, street lamps and a map of Illinois.
At John’s premature death, Mary was left with three small children: Sarah Catherine, age 4; Keziah Elizabeth, age 2; and infant son, John Ferris Levi Maddox.
Mary continued to operate the Maddox House until at least 1855, when she hired David Abner Waterman to manage the day-to-day affairs of the inn. On June 7, 1860, when the census was taken, 28 guests were registered as boarding there, including clerks and carpenters to physicians, lawyers, millwrights and railroad workers.
A story from Perrin’s history of Effingham County centers on Mary Maddox. A backwoodsman by the name of Ben Campbell – described as a man of tremendous physical organization, with coarse features, a sun-burned skin, with great scars upon his face and body – came to Vandalia while the legislature was in session.
On his way, he killed a fine fat turkey gobbler. This he negotiated at the hotel for his dinner and horse feed, stipulating that he was to have his dinner earlier than the regular meal, and to have some of the turkey. When he sat down to the table, he ate the entire turkey, as well as everything else that was on the table.
Mother Maddox, the landlady, declared that she honored the guest that honored the food she put before them by eating heartily, and so she extended a lifetime invitation to Campbell to always come and, without money and without turkeys, to eat at her table for free.
Mary Maddox died on Jan. 30, 1861, at the age of 51, and is buried with her husband in the Old State Burial Ground in Vandalia. Several months after her death, David Waterman, who had been managing the inn for the Maddox family, married Keziah Maddox.
Mary’s eldest daughter, Sarah Catherine, the widow of Henry W. Goode, followed her mother to the grave within three months.  It is from Sarah Maddox Goode’s estate records that we learn that the old lodging house was no longer being operated by the family in 1875, but was rented out.
Mary’s son, John F.L. Maddox, served as mayor of Vandalia from 1887 to 1889, later moving to Indiana.
Today, the name Maddox has disappeared from Vandalia’s landscape, although the family contributed much to Vandalia’s early growth.