The Shumway post office opened in 1879, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Tolerance (1872), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 130 in 18802020 census: 188147 years
Founding year: the first Shumway post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).
What stands out about Shumway’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 291 in 1910; 188 people lived here in 2020.
14 censuses, 1880–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Shumway’s Wikipedia page.
The story so far
Shumway, in brief
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Shumway yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Shumway is a village in Effingham County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, the village population was 188. Shumway is part of the Effingham, Illinois Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Its first post office opened in 1879. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 202 to 188 (-7%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
From the old history books
What they wrote about Shumway in 1883
Passages that mention Shumway, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Effingham county, Illinois1883 · page 258Read the page →
Read the text
ment of a post office then called Tolerance, of which he was appointed Postmaster, serving in that capacity until 1879, when the office was changed to Shumway. In 1878, he erected the " Tolerance Flouring Mills " in the town of Shumway, Banner Township, of which he is proprietor, at a cost of $11,000. The mill carries three run of stone, and handles about
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Effingham county, Illinois1883 · page 266Read the page →
Read the text
years, but does not appear to have gained much in numbers. The organization was afterward moved to a place about one mile north of the village of Shumway, and a house of worship erected, which is still standing, though not used for church purposes, as the society was abandoned manv years ago. The German Methodists established a church,
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Shumway, 1872 to 1950
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (4), U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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