The Washington school 5th grade classes visited the museum to learn about local history and the lives of earlier people on May 3, 4, 5 & 12, 2023. The classes were attended by Washington school teachers Ms. Reynolds, Mr. Vickery, Ms. Holderfield and Ms. Shoukletevich. Each of the four touring classes had about 18 students. All of the students were presented with a small workbook to point out prominent facts about the musuem and local county history.
A couple from Oberwiesen, Germany along with local tour guide visited WCHS Museum today while on their 3 week visit to the U.S.
The local history books “Maranda” and “Horse and Buggy Days” have had their indexing added to our Master Local History Index.
Debra S. Johnson, stopped by the WCHS museum on May 5th, 2023, to drop off a copy of her newly published book, “The Marshall Crain Story.” One year ago, Debra was at the WCHS museum/library gathering up facts to include in her new book.
For those who may not remember, in the early 1870’s in this county, there was a Hatfield/McCoy type event called the “Bloody Vendetta.” Blocks of families from the Carterville/Cambria area chose sides in inflicting revenge against each other over a number of years. The feud culminated int 1875 with the murder of William Spence, a Carterville shop keeper and ex Williamson County sheriff, George W. Sisney who was then living in Carbondale to avoid becoming a victim. Both men were found to have been murdered by Marshall Crain and in the spring of 1876, Crain became the first man in Williamson County to be publicly hung.
Debra has spun a historical fiction around Marshall Crain based on historical facts, family stories and supposition to create an intriguing story. The book is available on Amazon.com for $17.95.
The Williamson County Historical Society held its first membership meeting since the beginning of the Covid pandemic on Sunday, May 7th, 2023 at its museum/library located at 105 S. Van Buren St. in Marion.
The membership meeting was conducted by society president, Sam Lattuca who brought the membership up to date on the society’s museum and library activities since the shutdown in the spring of 2020. Parts of the report included building maintenance, its website, museum display room updates, books published, new items introduced into the museum and the status of its membership as well as ongoing and upcoming projects.
The program for the meeting was conducted by Marion resident and society member, Charla Murphy who gave a talk about the short lived 128th Illinois Infantry founded in the county not long after John A. Logan’s speech on the Marion public square in the fall of 1862 during the Civil War. The 128th has often been maligned through history and jokingly called the ‘wang dang doodles’ due to what appeared to be a mismanaged and highly disorganized unit with a high desertion count. Murphy, however, through reading newspapers of the time, government reports, regimental records and pension reports made the case that there was another far more complicated side to the story that involved potential sabotage by confederate sympathizers, failure of leadership and political intrigue.
The historical society’s museum/library is open to the public for tours or genealogy research Wednesday through Saturday from 9:30 A.M. till 3:00 P.M.