The following article was extracted from the Marion Daily Republican of July 10, 1963 and reports on the clearing of the 900 block of the public square following the Cox Hardware/ Goss Appliance fire on May 6th 1963 that decimated that block of the square.
The article also references the Barbaro lot which was a tavern called South Side Tavern at 105 S. Market Street, also destroyed in the fire. The reference to the Sam Dunaway property is, I believe, the property on the south side of E. College Street. Dunaway owned the house and ran an insurance business out of what is now occupied by the Bradley House Insurance at 205 S. Market Street.
The reference to the court house fire was the second county court house that used to occupy the same location on the square as the old Cox Hardware store next to Franklin Avenue, now occupied by the Salvation Army. For the full text of the fire on June 3, 1875 as reported by the Egyptian Press newspaper on the June 4, 1875, click here.
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“Ed Gentry, Marion High School graduate this year and one of the best students of local history, has been searching all available records to find the origin of the numerous wells, cisterns and one tunnel found, after the fire that destroyed the Marion city square block on the night of May 6 (1963).
Three cisterns or wells were uncovered in the Sam Barbaro lot, close to College Street and one was found in the Cox lot in the same area.
When workmen started cleaning out the Cox lot, next to the public square, they found what appeared to be an abandoned tunnel on the east side, near Franklin avenue, but have not found where it went, what it was used for or when it was covered by a concrete floor.
Another of the mysterious cisterns or wells was found a few years ago on the Sam Dunaway property, when it caved in one night, without any warning. Dunaway had it filled at that time.
It is the general opinion that these wells or cisterns, which all had water in them, when discovered, were a portion of Marion’s early fire protection. Gentry in his account of the early fire that destroyed the court house of 1875 mentions “carrying water from wells and cisterns.”
(Extracted from the Marion Daily Republican of July 10, 1963)