Category: WCHS

The index to the newspaper extract book, Events in Egypt, 1920, Volume 8 has been added to the Library Resource Index. This volume was published by Helen Sutt Lind and includes news extracts taken from Marion newspapers in the year 1920. It contains the names of 5,312  people that are now included in the Master Library Resource Index found under the Records Tab of this site. The master now contains 84,225 references so give it time to load.

The book, Pioneer Folks and Places, published in 1939 by Barbara Barr Hubbs has been re-indexed and added to our new Library Resource Index bringing the references up to 78,913. The new book was put together in preparation for Williamson County’s 100th Centennial celebration in 1939 and is an excellent resource containing references to early villages, pioneers, settlements and landmarks found in the county. A number of references are related to early trails and coal mines. References added break down to:

Acts of God 1, Businesses 282, Churches 75, Crime 1, Government 53, Organizations 13, Places 120, Schools 54 and People 1,773 for a total of 2,372 new references.

It should be noted that the index currently consists of app. 38 books and the Marion City Cemetery. Each book index can be individually filtered by clicking on the small down pointing arrow in Column C, then select “Filter”. You can then select or deselect only the books you wish to see.

Link to Updated Library Resource Index

The index to the Williamson County Illinois Sesquicentennial History book has been added to the Library Resource Index. The book was published in the years following the 1989 Sesquicentennial event celebrating Williamson County’s 150^th Anniversary. The index addition references 6,847 new Items including individual names, historic references, places, businesses, schools, organization, churches, crime and more. The index now contains 76,522 references and covers app. 37 books. The book is available for sale at the Williamson County Museum.

The index can be found under the Records Tab from any page, then select:

                                                    Library Resource Index

The Williamson County Museum recently received a donated artifact that once likely belonged to either the Shelton or Birger gang. The artifact is a 12 Ga. Model 1897 Winchester riot gun manufactured between 1904 and 1920. It has a short 20” barrel resembling a sawed off shotgun and was a specialty item usually sold to police for riot control.

The weapon was donated by Woody Ashby, son of Ethel Ashby. Ethel Ashby at one time owned an antique business in Marion called the Old Sleigh Bell and was the principal organizer of the museum when the county offered the old jail building to the historical society back in 1972. She also donated many of the items found in the museum today. Woody stated that he had owned the gun for the last 35 years and it was passed on to him through his mother and before that through an aunt that had a connection to the Shelton’s but that it was thought to have come from the Birger gang.

The gun will be placed on display after it has had research done on it and a display worked out for it.

For the past few months, we have been working on a master reference index that will undoubtedly take years to finish. The intent is to index information found in in the genealogy library of the museum like audited cemetery books, local history books, etc. so that references to individuals, businesses, schools, organizations or city and county government can be referenced from a master index. The index is not necessarily intended to give you the information you need, but does yield some data, and will indicate whether the information can be found and where, if any. So far, we have 33 cemetery books, the Marion city cemeteries, and one local history book in the index and it’s just short of 70,000 entries. This index should help researchers not living in town with access to the museum resolve whether we might have information on an ancestor, shorten search time for volunteers and help make our books last longer.

It’s interesting to note that the one local history book (1905 Historical Souvenir) included in this index yielded app. 3,600 references and loads of genealogical and local business data. Keep in mind, common misspellings of last names, name changes over time and the time periods involved.

Anyone with free time who can volunteer to help get more of our books indexed please contact us.

Since this index was done in Excel spreadsheet and will change reasonably often, I am leaving it in spreadsheet form. Clicking the link will take you to Microsoft’s Excel online spreadsheet reader. There are scroll bars to help you navigate the lengthy spreadsheet and you will find a “FIND” function when you click the three horizontal dots in the upper right header. You can also download it and run it under Excel on your own computer. References to the Marion City Cemetery will link you to the Marion City Cemetery search page. Thanks to Marion’s IT guy, Terence Henry for exporting the data for us.

Have fun searching and leave a message if you like it or discover a glitch. You might also thank Helen Sutt Lind or Charla Murphy and others for tromping around in the weeds gathering loads of cemetery information over the years.

The link can be found under the Records tab on any page and is called:

Library Reference Index

Williamson County Historical Society president, Sam Lattuca, spoke to the Christian Women’s Fellowship of the First Christian Church on Tuesday, February 7^th, 2017. Lattuca covered the early French exploration and formation of the county and chain of title leading up to the formation of the county in 1839. He also addressed early surveying of the city of Marion and gave numerous details of the early families which formed the foundation of the early Christian Church in Marion.

The Williamson County Historical Society held a membership meeting on Sunday, January 29^th at the county museum on S. Van Buren Street in Marion. Society projects recently completed and projected were discussed. The group was addressed by former Williamson County Sheriff and author, Harry Spiller, who recounted his experiences while serving as county sheriff. New museum objects were displayed as well as historical items brought in by the membership.

The historical society recognized the contributions of member Helen Davis for her years of devotion to the society. Mrs. Davis served multiple terms as club president, treasurer and director in addition to serving as the museum’s curator for well over a decade.