Category: WCHS

The Marion Garden Club presented the historical society with a check for $150 on Monday, the 7^th, 2021. The garden club has supported the historical society every year for a long time with a yearly donation and the planting of two large planters that sit in front of the museum. Shown presenting the check is Garden Club president, Debbie Lattuca to Historical Society president, Sam Lattuca. Garden club members present were Sandy Long, Sheila Dingrando, Connie Hayes and Linda Minnis was the photographer. The museum will be reopening to the public at first on a four day a week basis starting on June 23^th.

Birth Records of Williamson County, Illinois, Book One (1877-1883) transcribed by Dorothy Boyd  (2,469 entries)

Williamson County, Illinois Birth Records 1877-1879 Volume 1 by Mary Jo Moore (3,126 entries)

Williamson County, Illinois Birth Records 1879-1881 Volume 2 by Mary Jo Moore (2,767 entries)

Apparently, the first attempt to record births in the state of Illinois occurred in 1877, however I am reasonably sure that many births were never recorded during this period.

The three books recently added are transcripts from the Williamson County birth book 1 that got registered. The birth records are handwritten and hard to read. Information found in the birth records are supposed to contain, but don’t always have the name, birth date, place of birth, residence and nationality of the parents, as well as the names of the parents, the fathers occupation, number of children born to the mother and the name of the person who attended the birth. Unfortunately many of the records are incomplete and often the child was yet to be named and only has the sex of the child, date of birth and parent’s names to go by which is better than nothing.

These books are duplicates of each other for the same period, Moore’s books contains indexing to each separate name and the Boyd book contains the parents indexed on the same line as the child. Since the books are hard to read, having two versions of the same information could be a good thing since there might be a better chance of identifying the person you are looking for.

The indexing for these books has been placed in the Misc. County Records Index which can be found under the Records tab.

The Gallatin County Historical Society visited our museum and library on Saturday, May 22nd, 2021. Ten members of the society were on hand to tour the museum including a few recently reworked exhibits and rooms. Members of the Gallatin County society were Laura Benson-Henson, Bruce and Tamara Buddick, Terry Butts, Cindy Decker, Diane Patrick and  Christy and Wayne Short. The tour of the museum was arranged by John Wohlwend of Marion who is a member of both Gallatin and Williamson County. Tours were given by WCHS President, Sam Lattuca and Curator/Coordinator, Sharon Vansaghi. 

While the museum remains mostly closed to the public at the moment due to the pandemic it will be reopening to the public in some fashion during the month of June.

In order to ease back into a full time museum/library again during the pandemic, we will be allowing visitors who want to do research in our library on Saturdays only and by appointment only. Of course, masks are required as well as social distancing. 

To make an appointment, call 618-997-5863 or email us at wchsmail@yahoo.com

The obituaries for Williamson County posted during the period of October through December 2020 have been added to our Master Obituaries Index that can be found by accessing our Records Tab and selecting Library Resource Indexes.

 

This past summer, Mary Lou, Rita and Sheila Kovac of Johnston City were moving out of their ancestral home and donated numerous articles to the museum. Their Grgurich family members had lived in the house since around 1920 after their original immigrant ancestor, Frank Grgurich, who shifted their name to Gregovich, had migrated from Croatia in 1907. The family hosted the arrival of several Eastern European families to Johnston City over the years.

Two of the items donated were in the possession of the family for decades and originally belonged to the Trout family of Johnston City. John Richard Trout, known as Dick, started up the Trout Shoe Repair shop in Johnston City and it stayed in operation from 1914 till 1971, later under the operation of Dick’s son. As the story goes, one of the Trout family borrowed money from Joe Gregovich many decades ago and two pieces of shoe repair equipment were held as collateral against the loan which was never recovered so the equipment sat in storage deteriorating.

The equipment consisting of a shoe line finisher and a shoe repair work stand was donated to the museum and after 45-50 hours of restoration work the items are now held on display in fully functioning operation. Even the electric motor which has a patent date of 1901 is fully operational. The accompanying pictures illustrate its condition before and after restoration and the new display at the museum explains the use of the pieces. One of the photos show Dick Trout ca 1915 in his shoe repair business and if you look closely behind the man in the striped coveralls you will see one of the pieces of equipment.

An extensive index to the book “Steal Easy: A Memoiric History of Crab Orchard, Illinois” written by ex- resident John M. Brewer and published in 1985 has been added to our Master Local History Index and made available from the Records tab on our website.

The book recounts the formative pioneer years of Crab Orchard and details a fair amount of information about local families, businesses, churches, schools and events through time. It also explains, of course, why Crab Orchard was often referred to as “steal easy” due to how easy it was to steal merchandise from the local mill in the early days. Some of the many families covered are Allen, Brewer, Corder, Davis, Edwards, Ensminger, Fowler, Fiveash, Furlong, Harris, Hill, Motsinger, Parks, Pulley, Richey, Smith, Swan, Tanner, Tidwell and Turner just to mention a few. The new index contains 1,614 references to people, crime, acts of God, churches, businesses, organizations, schools, places and events.

The new book index can be viewed individually here: Steal Easy, a History of Crab Orchard

or the entire Master Local History Index can be viewed here:  Master Local History Index

Digital obituaries posted at funeral homes throughout Williamson County have been accumulated in our library since January 2015 and get updated periodically. We have added the obits from April through September 2020 to our Master Obituary Index that now contains 36,938 obit references including our other obituary sources. 

Funeral home services in the county appear to run around 50 per month but had peaked at 80 funerals in the month of September 2020.

Not long ago we posted the index to the book “Glances of the Past” put together by Pearl Roberts in 1977. The book covered the history of Johnston City starting in the small village of Shakerag and covered the years from 1894 through the end of WWII. The book was based upon a series of 168 articles that Pearl had originally written for the Williamson Observer newspaper between July 1972 and continued writing through November 1979 after publication.

Because a lot of information had to be culled and was missed for the book and since there was a fair amount of county history contained within the articles that wasn’t included in the book we decided to index the original newspaper articles that covered Johnston City through its history up to 1952.

Whereas the index of the book is titled as “Glimpses of the Past, Johnston City, 1894-1945” in the Master Local History index, the index for the articles will be titled “Glimpses of the Past, Articles, Johnston City.”

Both are now incorporated into the Master Local History Index that can be found under the Records tab of our site.

The local history book “Glimpses of the Past” was published by Pearl Roberts as a project of the Johnston City Business & Professional Women’s Club in 1977. The book serves as a collection of early stories and news items of interest dating from 1894 and the movement of the city from the early settlement of Shakerag west to what is now Johnston City through the city’s development, mining days, prohibition and depression to the last days of WWII in 1945.

The new index contains 2,211 entries and has been added to our Master Local History Index under the Records Tab of our website. Like the rest of our local history indexes, it contains not only the names of people but subcategories such as Acts of God, Crime, Businesses, Churches, Events, Places, Schools and Organizations. The new index can be accessed singly at this link:                                 

                                 Glimpses of the Past, Johnston City, 1894-1945