Williamson County Illinois Historical Society

Preserving Williamson County History – A 501(C)3 Organization

What’s New

  • New Laptop Added and Media Database Grows

    A new HP laptop computer was added to the museum’s library last week for the use of the public and volunteers. This now makes two public computers that are available for research at the library and two dedicated to volunteers only. With more records being converted to digital formats it has been made necessary to enable access through the use of additional computers.

    A digital media project that began last fall has now been completed and is in use at the museum. The media project involved scanning every photo, painting and drawing in the museum to create a searchable database in which surnames or key words can be input to search for related photos or drawings. In addition to the museum’s photos, the photos found in local history books are also being added to the database which now tops over 5, 200 entries. Original photos will no longer be accessible to browse due to wear and tear.

    All of our original county records have now been indexed and made available in spreadsheet form. These additional records which extend up to around 1963 will be made available on our website in the records section as soon as time is made available to post them.

  • A Chance to Own a Piece of History

    Vent stack

    The vent stack shown in this photo was part of the original installation on top of the Williamson County Jail when it was built in 1913. The jail was vacated in 1971 and deeded to the Williamson County Historical Society in 1972. As part of the renovations to the old jail to convert it to a museum, a new roof was installed in the 1980’s or 90’s and the vent stack was removed.

    The vent is made of solid copper and is approximately 30” in diameter and about 36 to 40 inches in height. In order to make room at the museum and raise money it was decided to just sell it for scrap, however it occurred to me that it might be appreciated by someone as a piece of history or the metal could be turned into art pieces with a story to tell.

    If anyone is interested in buying this piece we can be contacted at the museum at 997-5863 from 9:30 AM to 3 PM or through our website contact page at this link. https://www.wcihs.org/contact-us/

  • GSSI Conference Held at JA Logan College

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    The Genealogical Society of Southern Illinois held its 2015 family history conference at John A. Logan College on Saturday, August 8, 2015. The event was designed to aid those new to genealogy as well as those who may have hit a “brick wall” in their research and learn new resources.

    The guest speaker was Joshua Taylor, President of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and nationally known and recognized genealogical author, lecturer and researcher. There were approximately 180 people in attendance including 14 booths operated by local historical societies and clubs.

    Williamson County Historical Society members Colleen Norman, Dolores Thetford, Helen Lind and Sharon Vansaghi were on hand to man a book sale booth to raise funds for the Williamson County museum.

  • Museum Room Newly Remodeled

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    One of the rooms at the museum that has been used as a catchall and storage room for years was recently cleaned up and renovated into a more pleasant display and storage room. The room had served as the resting place for a pre-civil war barn loom but couldn’t really be accessed due to other materials in the room and the rooms condition. It was decided a couple of months ago to clean the room up and make it a part of the display and storage space in the basement of the museum.

    WCHS president Sam Lattuca took on the task of converting the room and with the assistance of volunteers Ursula Richey and Scott Pierce the room was cleared and the walls, ceiling and floors were painted. Lattuca built four 8 foot long shelve sections in his garage and they were moved into the museum basement room as sub-assembled pieces where they were completely assembled with the assistance of his daughter and son-in-law, Angie and Damon Carter. During the process, the large barn loom which occupied the center of the floor had to be moved out of the way and then back in place. Bruce Carter helped wrangle the loom along with WCHS board members. The shelves were painted by volunteers Khani Duncan and Debbie Lattuca.

    New lighting helps illuminate the barn loom and its associated pieces along with a Grand spinning wheel, wool carding tools and a spinning weasel which was used to measure yarn lengths. New display signage is currently being installed to help explain the process of converting not only raw sheep’s wool but rags and flour sacks into usable materials used by generations of pioneer families.

  • Museum Will be Closed on July 4th

    The county museum and library will be closed on Saturday July the 4th in observance of Independence Day. Be safe.

  • ESPN Staff Writer Visits Museum

    Steve Wulf

    The Williamson County Museum was host to Steve Wulf on Thursday, June 25, 2015. Steve is a staff writer for the ESPN sports network based in Connecticut and lives in Westchester, New York. With the introduction of the Cincinnati baseball team getting back into the All Stars this year, the location harkens back to 1970 when Ray Fosse and Pete Rose collided at home plate hampering Fosse’s career.

    With the All Star game being held in Cincinnati where the 1970 collision occurred, Wulf decided to do a Marion perspective piece on Ray Fosse. Ironically, Pete Rose was held in the Marion minimum security work camp for years at the Marion prison.

    WCHS society board member, past president and sports enthusiast Bob Jackson was able to give Wulf plenty of information about Fosse and his roots here in Marion as well as data and articles about Fosse’s career. Be sure to watch for Wulf’s report in the days to come.

  • Museum Receives Donation of Title Abstracts

    Our museum recently received a donation of over 700 property abstract titles and numerous city and county property maps. Since property owners today no longer receive abstracts when their mortgage is paid off, many may not be familiar with them. An abstract is a chain of title to a particular piece of property and all of them begin with the purchase of the property from the federal government, in the case of Williamson County real estate, most were originally purchased between 1830 and 1860 or later. Each and every owner in the chain of ownership including mortgage holders are contained within the abstract up to the current owner or in this case, whenever the abstract records quit being kept.

    Abstracts are a genealogical and historical gold mine, since they contain all of the details of each property transaction throughout the decades of ownership. Paperwork often found within an abstract will contain but not be limited to divorce, mortgage, foreclosure, insolvency, mental health, wills and probate records, partitions and much more.

    The document collection was obtained from John K. Miller by Jim Powless over 25 years ago and was recently donated to the museum by his widow, Susan Powless, thanks to Jim’s brother, David Powless. John K. Miller was the son of Ray Miller and both of them operated the Marion Abstract Company located in the basement of the Bank of Marion for decades.

    The items were sorted and carefully re-boxed for storage on Saturday, June the 13th , by Colleen Norman and Sam Lattuca.  At some point in the future, the abstracts will be indexed and itemized in a database. Since the museum is already woefully short of volunteers, it isn’t likely that the collection will be available for access at any time in the near future since we are already overloaded with projects and too few volunteers.

  • Marion Garden Club Makes Donation to the Museum

    Marion Garden Club members Lynn Love (past president) and Debbie Lattuca (current club secretary) installed 6 new azalea shrubs in the beds at the front of the county museum on June 2, 2015. The Garden Club usually donates $150 per year to the museum after deducting the costs of annual bedding plants and supplies which club members plant for the museum each spring.

    It was decided this year to install perennial shrubs which  will add color to the front of the building in the spring and require less overall maintenance in the long run. The azaleas were donated to the museum by Sam and Debbie Lattuca of Marion. Bedding plants were installed by the club in large planters on either side of the front entry steps to the museum.

    On Monday, June 8, 2015, several of the Garden Club members visited the museum and the equivalent of $150 in money, bedding plants and mulch was donated to the museum. Sam Lattuca, current Williamson County Historical Society president accepted the donation on the part of the museum.

  • Wohlwend Family Visits Museum

    Wohlwend
    Shown L-R are John Wohlwend, Ron Wohlwend, Betty Neely and Sharon Wilson in background

    Descendants of the Wohlwend family visited the museum on Monday, June 8, 2015 to research their local family roots, tour the museum and recollect times gone by. The Wohlwend family owned family farms west of Marion prior to the installation of the Illinois Ordnance Plant (Ordill) in 1941 which uprooted over 100 families. The properties are now part of the Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge.

    Many of the early family members attended rural one room school houses such as Bainbridge School while they were young. Betty Neely, a Marion resident, was one of those students and still has vivid recollections of those days.

    The Wohlwend family were also involved in the formation of the Bank of Egypt and operated Wohlwend Motors (later called Westernaire Dodge.)

    Members of the Wohlwend family in attendance on Monday were John and Ron Wohlwend, Betty (Wohlwend) Neely, Sharon Wilson. Also visiting with the Wohlwends was Rick Avery.

  • Two Wars of the 20’s Historical Tour June 27th 2015

    TWO WARS