“The Williamson County Agricultural Society was incorporated in 1856, with the following gentlemen as its first officers:  Willis Allen, President: John H. White, secretary: James D. Pulley, treasurer. Its Directors were: John Goodall, J. H. Swindell, O. H. Pulley, R. M. Hundley and George Willard. Prominent among the members of the Association were: M. C. Campbell. George W. Binkley and John M. Cunningham, who all united in the purchase of ten acres of land from T. A. Aikman, to be used as a fair ground.

It lay on the west side, just outside of the then corporate limits of the town, and cost $5 per acre. The gentlemen whose names are given above fitted it up at their own expense, besides buying the land, and then made a present of it to the Society. Annual fairs were held on this place until after the beginning of the Civil War, when it was sold to R. M. Hundley.”—–1905 Souvenir History, WCHS

Thanks to an article written by Jon Musgrave for the 1995 Marion History Edition of the Marion Daily Republican we now know where the original fair grounds were located as the following extraction indicates:

“The old fairgrounds were still fairly new then, only dedicated seven years earlier. Originally part of the Aikman farm, the ten acre tract was located on the south side of the Marion to Carbondale Road (now Main Street) between, what’s now Bentley and Russell Streets and bounded on the south by Cherry Street.”

The old fairground was in use from 1856 till the new fairground was purchased in 1866.

(Google map location and Compiled by Sam Lattuca on 02/17/2013)