Life on the Home Front During the Civil War

The following is taken from “Thy People Shall Be My People or Elizabeth Ann and the Roberts Clan” by Daisy Roberts Malone. These excerpts were written by Elizabeth Ann Chadwell who was born 10 May 1825, the daughter of John Shepherd and Sarah Clark. She married William Rufus Roberts 18 Aug 1841 and after his death married Charles W. Chadwell 9 Nov 1849, both marriages in Williamson Co., Illinois. Elizabeth Ann died 13 May 1916 and is buried in Zion Cemetery, Corinth, Illinois. Continue reading

1937, Marion’s Last Two Civil War Veterans

Last Two Veterans of Civil War Living In Marion Recall Days of War Period In South

G. W. Ingels, 88, and Phil Johnson, 100-year Old Colored Veteran, Are Survivors In Marion

Memorial Day in Marion in 1937 finds the thinning ranks of Civil War veterans has dwindled to two Union soldiers, one of them a white man who shouldered a gun at the age of 15 years and the other a colored man who at the age of 17 went away to war from a Kentucky plantation with the echo of the slave-driver’s lash and the cries of beaten human beings echoing in his ears. Continue reading

Aikman, William 1825-1890 and Mary 1827-1913

William Aikman was born April 2, 1825 in Davies County, Indiana. He was the fourth son of Samuel Aikman and Henrietta Coleman who were originally natives of North Carolina and came to Marion in 1837 with a family of six boys and three girls.

The family settled on the west side of Marion before the town was platted or built, while this County was still a part of Franklin and entered a strip of land from the government, half a mile wide and a mile and a half long, lying along where the C. & E. I. railroad (now Missouri Pacific) runs. It is known to have extended as far west as the VA hospital ground and as far east as Court Street. Continue reading