William L. “Will” Schmehr, Self-Proclaimed “Mayor of Fishtown”
William Lawrence Schmehr (1887–1969) was a riverfront character whose life became intertwined with Fishtown, a ramshackle settlement beneath the Henderson riverbank between about 7th and 12th streets where shanty-boats, makeshift houses, and some of the city’s poorest residents clustered.
By the 1910s and 1920s, Schmehr, born in Louisville and working as a traveling junk dealer, had settled there. Over time he adopted the tongue-in-cheek title of “Mayor of Fishtown,” a label locals understood as marking him the unofficial gatekeeper of the riverbank community.
Schmehr made front-page news in March 1927 when he was charged with breach of the peace after a dispute with neighbor Nora Davis. The quarrel erupted when the Davises received a city permit to build a house in Fishtown. Schmehr became angry because, in his view, new residents were supposed to seek his permission as well. He was ultimately found not guilty, but the case cemented his reputation as the self-appointed protector of the riverfront community.
His second major appearance in the papers came in 1933, when federal agents arrested him for owning a 100-gallon copper still and producing moonshine near his shanty-boat. Unable to post bond, he awaited a federal hearing, an episode that reinforced his image as a man living on the margins of both river and law. Draft records and census entries place Schmehr in Fishtown for decades.
William L. Schmehr died in 1969 at age 85. His obituary remembered him simply as a longtime Henderson resident. But the riverfront remembered him differently: as the colorful, stubborn, and self-made “Mayor of Fishtown,” a man whose personality shaped one of the most unusual neighborhoods in Henderson’s history.
