Oliver Harper “Harp” Wiley was born in Cabarrus County, North Carolina November 30, 1807.
“Harp” Wiley married Matilda Krantz (1808 – 1891), daughter of Thomas Krantz and Elizabeth Kent. Matilda was a teen-aged orphan when she and her sister, Sarah, came from Cheatham County, Tenn. to Franklin County, Illinois with a Sanders family in an oxcart. Her sister, Sarah married Wiley Berry Chamness (1811-1882), founder of the Chamness settlement, now in the Wildlife Refuge. Continue reading
At the close of the Revolutionary War, a great many soldiers were discharged and sent home without their pay. To remedy this, the Continental Congress passed an act granting to every such discharged soldier one hundred acres of land, to be selected by him within a prescribed territory; and on October 22nd, 1787, that congress set off as a reservation for that purpose, a portion of land in the Northwest Territory, described and bounded as follows: Continue reading
Soldiers of 1776 Buried in County
More than a score of men who served in the Continental Army in the American Revolution lie buried in Williamson County, where they came to live after the war, forming a link between their adopted state and county and the nationwide Bicentennial celebration in 1976.
In rural cemeteries scattered throughout the county are the graves of these soldiers of 200 years ago, some of them marked with stone tablets allocated by the government, some of them not located by the painstaking search by persons engaged in efforts to pay them eternal tribute. Continue reading
Williamson County area as it existed in 1720, prepared by Ron Emery
Map drawn up from Nannie Gray’s 1939 map by Ron Emery, isolating which areas of the county early French trappers and Shawnee indians inhabited and lived. The French had established a fort at Kaskaskia, south of St. Louis in 1703. Continue reading
Original Marion Survey 1839
Marion was located and name August 20, 1839 by three commissioners from nearby counties appointed by the legislature. Continue reading