What’s New

Our society over the past year has published two volumes of funeral home records for the Ozment Funeral Home that operated here in Marion covering the years 1914-1945. Before becoming Mitchell Funeral Home, the business became Ozment-Mitchell Funeral Home and we recently published two more volumes covering the years 1945-1962 for the business in Volumes 3 and 4. The indexes have been added to our Master Funeral Home Index on our website and the books are available for research at our library. Copies can also be purchased for $35 per volume while they are available.

We will be holding a membership meeting here at the museum on Sunday, July 15^th, 2018, at 2:00 P.M.  We will be discussing society business as well as completed, ongoing and future projects as well as showcasing our newly remodeled Native American room.  If you have a show & tell item, feel free to bring it. The program will be presented by Mike McNerny who will be speaking about discoveries made in his latest book related to unusual tombstone markers.

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting and want to remind you that we are continually adding resources to our website at www.wcihs.org which have now exceeded 500,000 references online.

We have added a list of all of our newspaper archives and microfilm inventory to our website. We offer several decades of the Marion Daily Republican and Johnston City Progress archives and approximately 120 microfilms. Links to these resources can be found on our Library Resources Page

With the latest addition of the Creal Springs book, our website now contains over 410,000 index references from 175 of our most referenced books available online. When added to 97,000 court case references, we now offer over half a million references available to the public on our website.

Access our records by clicking on the Records tab on any page.

The index to the booklet put together related to the City of Creal Springs has been added to our Master Local History Index on our site. The booklet contains newspaper clippings, history articles that have been written and numerous photos of Creal Springs. Considerable information related to articles written about the Ozark Hotel and the Creal Springs College is included.

In 1964, the county held a 125 year Quasqui-centennial event in Marion and produced a souvenir program book to accompany the event. The book index has been added to our website in the Master Local History Index.

In 1939, Williamson County Illinois celebrated its 100th anniversary so a centennial celebration was organized. This souvenir program was published and sold during the centennial and contains some historical data, names and business advertisers of the year 1939. Its index has now been added to the Master Local History Index on our site.

A booklet was published in 1926 by the Herrin Lion’s Club to sway the state and national attitudes about Williamson County and Herrin due to the large number of negative ads related to the KKK, prohibition violations and gang warfare that had been appearing in national papers. The booklet was intended to point out the positive points of our county and towns therein including Herrin, Marion, Carterville and Johnston City as well as convince state Lions Clubs to hold a state convention in Herrin. The booklet is naturally focused on business, infrastructure, schools and churches. The index has been added to our Master Local History Index.

The index to the promotional booklet “Marion, The Opportunity City” published in 1913 by the Marion Board of Trades has been added to the Master Local History Index on our site. The booklet was published to promote area business particularly Marion but also includes businesses in Johnston City, Herrin and Carterville. The obvious emphasis in the booklet is on the coal mining industry and lists all active mines at the time of publication in 1913. The booklet has since been republished and is for sale under the title “Williamson County, The Heart of Egypt.”

The index to the book “They Are not Forgotten, Men of Johnston City Who died in Uniform” put together by Bill Hampsey and Helen Lind in 2008 has been posted to the Master Military Index.