What’s New

Pack Leader, Brad Andrews, arranged a private tour of the Williamson County Museum on the evening of October 23^rd, 2018 from 6-8 P.M. Several Cub Scouts from Pack 21, sponsored by the Zion United Church of Christ in Marion along with their parents toured the museum guided by Williamson County Historical Society president, Sam Lattuca.

The scouts and their parents were informed of local history and shown historical artifacts throughout the museum that are indicative of daily life in earlier county history. The scouts found that many tasks that we perform today were considerably more labor intensive than they are today and many of the benefits of today’s living were non-existent in earlier times.

The Williamson County Historical Society held their October membership meeting on Sunday, October 21^st, 2018. Society projects completed and planned were discussed and new additional artifacts recently donated to the museum were presented to the membership. Carterville resident, business owner and author, Steve Schlager was the guest speaker describing his recently published book entitled, “The Train that Vanished.” Schlager likes to create fictional stories woven around local historical events.

Member Violet Grisham presented the museum library with her newly printed books related to the history of the Third Baptist Church in Marion.

The membership approved new board members for the year 2019 that include Sam Lattuca, Peggy Coriasco, Helen Sutt Lind, Ursula Richey, Michael Spinks, George Mavigiano, Bob Jackson and Andrew McRoy.

The Williamson County Historical Society Honor Roll plaque was inscribed with a new name and presented to President Sam Lattuca by Helen Sutt Lind. Lattuca was cited for his dedication to improvements at the county museum building and his efforts to improve genealogical records available at the museum’s library and online over the last several years.

After a lot of hard work earlier in the year, the Williamson County Historical Society has completed the remodeling of our Native American room at the museum.  All of the artifact display cases were reworked with lighting added and a number of informational displays were added to showcase the presence of natives in our county for the past several thousand years.

The museum has been gifted a couple of large artifact collections over the years and the new displays highlight the significance of these historic items and the Native American connection to the natural world. A multimedia display has been added to illustrate local native history and their daily lifestyles, tools, food, weapons and shelter.

The museum will remain open six days a week from Monday through Saturday from 9:30 till 3 PM until Thanksgiving after which the museum will reduce its hours over the winter to Saturdays only. The public is always welcome to drop by the museum at 105 S. Van Buren Street in Marion and take a walk through local history.

We will be holding a membership meeting at the museum on Sunday, October 21^st, 2018, at 2:00 P.M.  We will be discussing society business as well as completed, ongoing and future projects. If you have a show & tell item, feel free to bring it. Elections for 2019 board members will be held. Nominations for new board members may be made up to and including the day of the meeting.

The program will be presented by Steve Schlager, a Carterville business owner and author who enjoys weaving fiction around local history to create tales that could have been true. His program will be based on a fictional train robbery that occurred in the 1920’s.

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.

For decades, the Williamson County Historical Society has been trying to locate photographs of past Williamson County sheriffs and over the years the list has been narrowed down to the following names. If you are related to one of the counties past sheriffs listed below, look through your family photo albums and see if you can help us find photos of these individuals. Photos can be emailed to wchsmail@yahoo.com

Since there is little published about the village of Pittsburg, Illinois other than historical notations, we were pleased when Jane Whitehead, granddaughter of James T. Fowler, approached us with a couple of Justice of the Peace Docket books to copy. Fowler resided over local city skirmishes in Pittsburg while serving as Justice of the Peace of the village for at least a couple of decades. Most of the cases involved assault, theft, bad debts, public drunkenness or domestic abuse. Included along with the Justice of the Peace dockets were entries of Chattel Mortgages where those looking to borrow money from someone would officially establish collateral for the loan, usually in the form of livestock or personal property. (more…)

The last book in the Paisley Scrapbook series has been indexed and the index has been added to our Master Newspaper Index on our website. These volumes are related to the two trials held in late 1922 and early 1923 centered around the Herrin Massacre. They contain information related to the questioning of dozens of potential jurors and witnesses for the trial and reveal familial relationships, residential and occupational information of dozens of local residents. The index includes over 1,000 references.

Oldham Paisley and his father, W.O. Paisley, owned and operated the Marion Daily Republican from 1915 until it was sold in the 1970’s. During the 1920’s, Oldham covered all of the major events of the county as a reporter including the KKK, kidnapping and murder, gang members, gang warfare and the Herrin Massacre. Paisley collected all of his news clippings related to these events and grouped them. The historical society put these into book form to make them available to the public.

The entire series is as follows:

• Volume 1, 1922-24, Before & After Herrin Massacre
• Volume 2 & 3, 1922-23, First & Second Herrin Massacre Trials
• Volume 1A & 1B, 1922, Herrin Massacre
• Volume 4A & 4B, 1923-24, Ku Klux Klan
• Volume 5 & 6, 1924-26, Klan, Glenn Young, Charles Birger
• Volume 7 & 8, 1927-28, Charles Birger & Trial
• Volume 9, 1928-29, Birger, Boswell, Ritter

If you grew up in Williamson County and have ancestors from here you would probably be hard pressed to find a relative who wasn’t involved in some way to the coal mining industry. The production of coal dominated the economy of Williamson County for about 100 years.

Each year since around 1881, the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals has produced an annual coal report. These reports are in bound hardback book form and will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the local coal industry, but also contain some interesting information. Broken down by district and county, you can find all sorts of information on local mines including fatal and non-fatal accidents by the miner’s names and how the accidents occurred.

Our society maintains a series of these reports and we have most all reports from 1900 through 1978. If you have an ancestor who perished or was damaged in a coal mine accident this would be the place to look for further information. I have attached a few sample pages from the 1917 report.

Marion High School Sophomore, Ryhan Fox, was looking for extra school volunteer credits over the summer and decided to spend his time working at the Williamson County Historical Society. Ryhan, is the son of Bobbie and David Fox and lives at the Lake of Egypt. He said that he had toured the museum while in the fifth grade at Washington School, enjoyed it, and wanted to donate his time here. Ryhan is a member of the Marion High School Varsity football team and has racked up 75 hours of volunteer time over the summer, helping advance the renovation of one of the display jail cells in the museum.