The following was extracted from Goodspeed’s “History of Gallatin, Saline, Hamilton, Franklin and Williamson Counties, Illinois” and describes the first settlement of the county. It breaks down each township by who filed the first claims and in what year. The book was published in 1887 and data was likely accumulated in 1885 and 1886. Notes for clarification have been added in parenthesis. Continue reading
Category Archives: All Marion Content
1876 Business Directory, Marion, Williamson County, Illinois
Name, occupation, nativity and year settled in Illinois. Continue reading
James L. Adams was born in Dickson County, Tennessee on February 8, 1836 and came with his parents to Randolph County, Illinois, when but three years old. His parents were John Adams (1811 – 1855) and Martha Kennedy (1812 – 1900), who were natives of Caswell County, North Carolina but came to Tennessee while young and married there. Continue reading
Samuel McNight Dunaway, Williamson County pioneer, real estate tycoon, and business man, helped settle the village of Bainbridge in Williamson County and became an early land owner of more than 50 parcels of 40 acres or more. Buying and selling this land, along with his other business interests which included everything from merchant to railroad president, made him the richest man in the county by the middle 1800’s. Continue reading
Due to a law that went into effect in the fall of 1877 requiring births and deaths to be recorded, for the first time, we are given a glimpse of exactly what kind of things killed people back in that time frame. The following data was extracted from figures released by the Egyptian Press on January 9, 1879. Continue reading