The following article was published in the Marion Daily Republican in 1916 and recounts the recollections of William S. Morris who matured while living near Marion and joined the Union Army in Marion in 1861.
Marion Daily Republican, 7 Jan 1916
Men Who Made Honored Names Lived In Marion By W.S. Morris
My earliest recollection of Williamson County was a visit on horseback with my mother during the Mexican War. I rode behind her. The roads were for the most part mere cow paths. The country was full of game and the valleys were enlivened by the sugar camp and the crack of the hunter’s rifle. The prominent men way off at Santa Fe were J.M. Cunningham, John H. White, William Eubanks, Andrew Duff and John A. Logan. The latter achieved national fame, Duff became one of the ablest jurists in the state and John H. White fell on a field of glory at Donelson. Had he lived, he would have commanded an army corps long before the final climax at Appomattox.
I became a resident of the county about the year 1852 and so remained until the outbreak of the Civil War. I attended school at the Odum Schoolhouse on Caney Creek, taught by my father, 0. B. Morris. The schools were open, the hum-drum of miscellaneous reading and spelling by pupils could be heard several hundred yards away.
The brightest boys in the school were Hosea V. Ferrell and George Willeford; the best were Toby Violet and Ned Odum (both killed at Donelson) and worst were West Willard and myself. We played hooky and “fit” and so were made to sit on the dunce block. One day Willard laughed at a little girl who dropped her doll on the floor during “books” and the teacher made him sit on the block and sing her to sleep. The brightest girls were Angeline Violet and Susan Atwood.
Dr. Henry Willeford also taught at the same schoolhouse. He could take us through the nine parts of speech in Smith’s grammar, but of syntax, false or otherwise, neither himself or pupils knew one jot.
In the early 50’s, Wetty’s hand mill and the water mills of John Ward, Dick Ward, General Davis and Tom Davis, all on the Saline, were landmarks.
When we bolted our flour by hand, we parched corn in the ashes for supper. John Davis was a prominent man, George Ferrell a prosperous farmer of fine intelligence and a personal and political friend of Willis Allen.
Stockton manufactured cow bells on the rising ground north of the present crossing of the Illinois Central and Market Street. Elijah Spiller, three miles farther north, for industry, economy, prosperity and good citizenship, was a worthy disciple of Benjamin Franklin. James Goddard, on the west side, had the most pretentious business house in Marion. I helped haul the stone for the foundation.
Politics were at a white heat in Marion about the time of the baptism of Ft. Sumter. I remember one of the exciting days when a man rode through the crown on the public square yelling for Stephen A. Douglas. When called to account he admitted he was for the Union but swore he was for Douglas with “spontaneous combustion.”
Jack Lewis was a prominent farmer south of town. He was proud of himself, Andrew Jackson and the great republic. When Sumter was fired on, he declared. “If I was in Old Abe’s place, I would burn all the powder between the two seas and if them devils took Washington City. I would hang them in less than 24 hours.”
The people of Williamson County are of worthy ancestry. It may be said of them as of the people of England:
They love their land because it is their own
And scorn to give ought others reason why
Would shake hands with a king upon his throne
And think it kindness to his majesty
The geographical location of Marion foreshadows the not far off day when the center of population will be west of the city, when ocean steamers from the far west will discharge their cargoes at Cairo, when presidential and gubernatorial candidates and capitalistic nabobs will motor along your Logan-Lee Trail. When that day comes, Marion may stretch out its arms like a benevolent octopus and lay its enterprising hands upon many adjacent acres that are still awaiting the touch of progressive fingers to spring into activity, opulence and power.
Sam’s Notes: The author, William S. Morris, was born in Gallatin County, Illinois on December 4, 1842. In 1860 his family was living east of Marion and he enlisted in the 31st Illinois Infantry on August 19, 1861 at Marion. He was apparently wounded during the Civil War and was discharged on July 19, 1865 due to the war’s end. He lived as a lawyer in Golconda, Illinois for most of his life. He spent 1918 in a national home for disabled soldiers in Vermillion, Illinois and discharged himself in 1919. He died in Pope County on October 28, 1928.
(Article from the Marion Daily Republican, January 7, 1916; republished in “Footprints” a publication of the Williamson County Historical Society in Volume 3, #1, 2000)