Preserving Williamson County History – A 501(C)3 Organization
Posts related to the WCHS
Pie Day has become a tradition over the last few years at the historical society. It is a day in which we order out food (especially delicious pies) and have a lunch together with our volunteers and those who can attend. Those attending this time were Sam Lattuca, Ursula Richey, Michael Spinks, Helen Lind, Colleen Norman, Leann Johnson, Gloria Spinks, Charla Murphy, Candy Calcaterra, and Sharon Vansaghi
The Williamson County Historical Society helped the local Veteran’s Administration on Monday, November the 10th, 2025 celebrate the Marine Corps 250th Anniversary and Veteran’s Day on November 11th. The society has been working with the local Veteran’s Administration Hospital to supply them with vintage uniforms at their events for the past year now and this year was no different. Museum curator, Sharon Vansaghi, works with the VA coordinators to work out which uniform are needed for events. This Veteran’s Day, uniforms on loan at the V.A. included a dress uniform from the Spanish American war, WWI uniforms, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq wars.
Considering that October 26th, 2025 was an overcast rainy day here, we had a very nice turnout for our October membership meeting. Our guest speaker was the always informative Darrel Dexter, local historian and teacher. Dexter’s program was “General Grant in Egypt” and recounted how Grant began his early Civil War experience as an officer serving at a training camp just north of Jonesboro, Illinois and was later transferred to command at Cairo, Illinois where the town was transformed into a military encampment and he became a general. Dexter recounted how the city of Cairo changed through the Civil War period.
President, Sam Lattuca, informed the membership as to the current state of the museum and showed pictures of the many recently accessioned photos and artifacts that had been donated to the museum since the last quarterly meeting as well as current work that has been performed on the building.
The membership voted on the upcoming 2026 Officers and Directors. Those elected to serve in 2026 are:
Sam Lattuca, President; Andrew McRoy, 1st Vice President; Gloria Spinks, 2nd Vice President; Michael Spinks, Treasurer: Candy Calcaterra, Secretary. One new Director was elected to the board, Leann Johnson, whose term will serve from 2026 until 2028. Other Directors that serve on the board are Charla Murphy until 2026 and Helen Lind who serves until 2027.
Some physical changes have occurred at our museum building in the last month. The building served as the county jail and sheriff’s home from 1913 until early 1972 when the last of the inmates were moved to a new jail. Obviously, the building has endured over a hundred years of storms and bad weather and requires some TLC periodically.
In the month of September we had several locations in the brickwork tuckpointed as well as many of the joints in the limestone plinth stones that serve as the foundation for the building. In addition, three of our concrete entry steps were torn out and replaced and the stairwell to the south entrance had new concrete caps stones replaced that were deteriorating.
To make way for masonry repairs, we had the old north side wooden access ramp torn down so that the masons could do their work and the ramp was replaced with a new aluminum access ramp. Thanks to a grant from the city of Marion, half of the masonry work was covered and split the bill in half for us.
On October 16th, 2025 the local DAR chapter held their meeting at the WCHS museum/library. Front roll: Daniell H Brush Chapter of Carbondale and Marion, Illinois NSDAR #1 Gloria Spinks,1st Vice Regent, #2 Elizabeth Casten Regent, #3 State Regent Marria Blinn she is out of the Swallow Cliff Chapter NSDAR in Palos Heights, Illinois
Second Roll left to Right: Black Shirt Marilyn Beltz, Treasurer, Black Shirt #2 Judith Goodman, Chaplin, behind Marria’s shoulder is Debra Borecky, member, next gold outfit and sandals is Joy Upton, she is our Linage Research Committee Chair, 3rd roll, hidden gray hair Dona Lach, Membership Chair you can’t see her, green dress tall blonde Christine Brewer, Member, Half head Amber Hewette, Member Last gray pants and flowered jacket is Jenne Bierman, District VII Director, she is from the Beaucoup Creek Chapter out of Pinckneyville and DuQuoin Chapter.
The Marion Carnegie Library staff of 17 employees toured the historical society’s museum and library on Monday, October 13th, 2025. The function of the visit was to make library staff aware of the assets available at the historical society’s library and museum, since visitors come to both the society and the public library for historical and genealogical questions.
The Williamson County Historical Society will be holding a membership meeting on Sunday, October 26th , 2025 here at the museum/library at 2:00 P.M. During the meeting we will be going over projects undertaken at the museum & library since the last meeting, accessions taken in, upcoming projects and the state of the museum. The program will be by historian, Darrel Dexter, and the topic will be,” Ulysses S. Grant in Egypt”, about Grant’s time in Anna, Cairo and Mound City during the Civil War.
During the meeting we will be voting on a new officers for the year 2026 and there will be one open position of director. Anyone interested in serving on the board for next year should contact us here at the museum prior to the meeting. Also, we need a volunteer to serve as librarian to replace our current librarian.
The Williamson County Historical Society has just published the book, ”Old Marion Cemetery, a.k.a . Aikman Cemetery.” The book was just released by author Helen Lind and contains the names of 590 people. The first burial in the cemetery was John A. Aikman, son of Samuel and Henrietta Aikman in 1845. As time moved on, more members of the Aikman family were buried there and eventually all sorts of burials occurred there, including cholera victims of Marion from 1866. The cemetery became a city Cemetery, but that all changed in 1883 when the new city cemetery we know today was created at Rosehill. Many of the burials in the old cemetery were moved to the new cemetery after its creation.
The book if fully indexed, spiral bound, sells for $10 and is available at the historical society.
