What’s New

The Williamson County Historical Society held its first quarterly membership meeting on January 27^th at the museum in Marion. Completed and ongoing projects were discussed. Among them were the completion of indexing and reorganizing the 5 x 8 index cards related to the 1917-18 Woman’s Committee of National Defense and the addition of Williamson County Coal Mine Deaths and the 1850 through 1880 Mortality schedules to our online indexes.

Six new horizontal files were added to the museum in December enabling us to properly store large aerial photos, prints, maps and drawings. The file cabinets were much needed and long awaited and were donated to the museum via General Dynamics and was arranged by Michael Spinks.

Two new displays were created on the second floor of the museum by Curator Sharon Vansaghi. The displays house artifacts donated to the museum in November by the Warder Street Baptist Church which ceased operation in October 2018. In addition to numerous artifacts from the church we were also gifted the church records, photos and a $5,000 donation.

A rural school bell used at Chamness School was donated by Robert E. Chamness and was used by this grandfather when he taught at the school.

The first historical marker for the county sanctioned by the Illinois Historical Society is scheduled to be installed at Creal Springs sometime this coming spring and will mark the location and history of the Creal Springs College and Seminary.

Renovation of our display jail cell at the museum continues and will likely take some time to complete.

Our guest speaker was Circuit Judge John W. Sanders who spoke to the group about the structure of our county circuit court system and also discussed his genealogical connections to Williamson County. One of Judge Sander’s grandfathers was Willis T. Harris, past sheriff of Williamson County and his great grandfather served under John A. Logan in the Illinois 31^st Regiment during the Civil War.

Our society is in possession of almost all of the Illinois Coal Report books that were published between 1894 into the 1970’s. Each book details the names of all fatal and non-fatal mine accident victims. All of the books detail in which coal mine the accident occurred and how the accident occurred, while some also give more detailed accounts and some biographical information. The names of all 738 victims of fatal accidents have been indexed and added to our Misc. County Record Index, while the names only can be found at a separate link below.

Names of Coal Mine Fatalities Only

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, directed the organization of the Council of National Defense as a way of more or less inventorying the nation’s assets in preparation for our entry into World War I. An extension of the program was the Woman’s Committee which was administered on the state level.

The Woman’s Committee had several areas of emphasis: Americanization, Child Welfare, Educational Propaganda, Food Administration, Food Production, Foreign and Allied Relief, Health and Recreation, Registration, Women in Industry and Maintenance of Existing Social Agencies. Their work included registration of women in the state, assisting with Liberty Loan Bonds and with the November, 1917 food pledge. The Woman’s Committee struggled with establishing its authority over this work because of lack of clear direction from the federal government.

Regardless of its success, women from our county and the surrounding area were registered out of Marion and the Williamson County Historical Society is in possession of over 1,800 of these 5 X 8 registration cards that were filled out over the time period of November 1917 through May 1918. (more…)

A Christmas Lunch was held at the Asian Star restaurant in Marion on Wednesday, December 12^th, 2018. The lunch was held as a thank you to repay 2018 active volunteers and board members of the Williamson County Historical Society for their dedication and service. The historical society maintains a county museum in Marion at 105 S Van Buren Street which also houses an extensive genealogical and history research library. Those in attendance were Ursula Richey, Colleen Norman, Dolores Thetford, Gloria & Mike Spinks, Andrew & Lisa McRoy, Helen Lind, Sharon Vansaghi, Betty Millard and Sam & Debbie Lattuca.

Special recognition was given to Colleen Norman, Ursula Richey, Betty Millard & Sharon Vansaghi for their exceptional dedicated service throughout the year to the society and work at the Williamson County Museum. The museum is currently operating under its winter hours of operation of Saturday only, from 9:30 to 3 PM until March 1^st.

 

355 obituaries have been added to our Master Obituaries Index that range predominately from the 1940’s to the 1990’s. 

Mortality schedules were taken alongside the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 U.S. Federal censuses. Mortality schedules list people who died during the previous 12 months. These schedules include persons who died between June 1st through May 31st in the year prior to the federal census. A typical mortality schedule will list the dead person’s name, age, sex, color (white, black, or mulatto), married or widowed, birthplace, month of death, occupation, and cause of death. Though part of the federal censuses, mortality schedules are separate from the population schedules.

In most cases, volunteers have matched these people into township and range within the county.

Indexes to the 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 mortality schedules covering Williamson County have been added to our Master “Misc. County Records” Index on our website. The records can be found within the books of our society library. As always, inquiries can be made at the society or be emailing us at wchsmail@yahoo.com.

We have a surplus of Marion High School yearbooks and Marion city directories for sale at the museum. The yearbooks range from 1918 through 1996 and are mostly all in good condition. Some have inscriptions and some do not. We also have a number of Marion Junior High school yearbooks and city directories. All of these surplus books are available for $5 each. Check with us at wchsmail@yahoo.com.

Beginning in the 1980’s the historical society started clipping obituaries from newspapers and saving them in a card catalog. Over the years the collection has grown to about 24,000 obits and funeral cards including quite a few from the turn of the century forward. In addition, due to the fact that newspapers started charging for obit space in the paper, it was noted that a number of families may choose not to publish a loved ones obit. The decision was made, starting in January 2015, to begin collecting obits directly from the funeral homes in Williamson County who publish them. This task was taken on by WCHS volunteer Betty Millard who has since that date collected over 2,500 obits. All of these obits have been currently indexed and are now available in a new index category called “Obituaries” and can be found on our websites “Library Resource Indexes page”.

Since many people carry the same or similar names, every attempt was made to include as much familial information such as maiden names, parents and spouses where listed to avoid similarities. Keep in mind that many obits are not always listed by proper names but rather familiar names. An example would be Robert and William often go by Bob and Bill so just keep that in mind.

Since a new “Obituaries” category was created we have moved two Obituary books that were previously filed in the “Newspaper” category into the “Obituaries” category in order to keep them together. The new file will now reflect app. 35,000 obit references.

As always, if an obit of interest is found, let us know at wchsmail@yahoo.com and we can email them to you.