Monroe, Illinois? Never heard of it? Well, there is a good reason. For some reason, Monroe got lost in the dustbin of history along with other things that never happened. In 1938, Mrs. Nannie Gray Parks, based on a tip by Mr. Edward M. Stotlar, researched records at the Franklin County courthouse in Benton, Illinois. Mrs. Parks discovered that the county surveyor in 1837 had laid out a town to be known as Monroe.
According to Mrs. Parks, findings from the plat maps, indicated the town was situated in “Poor Prairie” on the farm of John Guinn, which would place the town of Monroe about where the Marion Junior High School is located on the corner of West Main and Russell Streets.
For some reason, not revealed by Mrs. Parks’ research, the town was not even considered for the county seat, and further, when Williamson County was split out of Franklin County in 1839, the plat maps were not transferred to the new Williamson County plat map. Thus, Monroe never had a shot at becoming the “hub of the universe.”
(Extracted from an article by Helen Lind and published in “Footprints”, WCHS, Volume 1, #2, Summer 1998)