If you are even the slightest bit interested in the early history of the county and the towns and villages contained within, this volume is an absolute gem that has intrigued county citizens for over a hundred years. Compiled in 1904 and published in 1905 by J.F. Wilcox, the “souvenir book man”, from the LeCrone Press in Effingham, Illinois, the book was a collaboration of Wilcox and numerous local citizens who dug deep and gathered an amazing and impressive volume.
The roughly 230 large pages of the volume are packed with very specific information about history, people, places, businesses and towns of the county. It contains well over a hundred vintage photos of pioneer movers and shakers and ordinary people with their biographies and their stories, not to mention photos of many of their homes ranging from log cabins to stately Victorian homes.
Early churches, schools, organization, businesses and industry are called out in detail accompanied by photos of shops, mines, factories and virtually anything you can imagine. The front 150 pages are devoted primarily to the county and county seat of Marion with a separate index. The final, roughly, 80 pages are devoted to Carterville, Herrin, Creal Springs, Johnston City and other points in the county, also with accompanying biographies, photos and a separate index of prominent civic and business leaders and families.
The volume has served as a foundation for research for not only myself on this site but many researchers looking into early families and businesses and is a “must have” item that ranks right up there with Milo Erwin’s “History of Williamson County”, except with pictures.
It was reprinted by the Williamson County Historical Society on April 1996 and is available at the society’s book store located at the old county jail on S. Van Buren Street in Marion. The cost of the reprint is $24 and is worth every penny of it just to be able to look back on early photos of many of the old homes in Marion and the surrounding county.
A free digital version is available online, but the photos are not particularly of useable quality due to compression. It is however, quite readable and in some forms like PDF are digitally searchable. It can be downloaded in various reader formats at Archives.org.
(Compiled by Sam Lattuca on 02/09/2014)