Dr. Alonzo Newton Baker, M.D. was born May 28, 1904 at 1310 W. Main in Marion, Illinois to Dr. Virgil Baker and Nora L. Neber. Alonzo was likely named after his grandfather Alonzo P. Baker, civil war soldier and pioneer county doctor who helped influence the formation of early professional Southern Illinois medical care. Continue reading
Category Archives: Military
James V. Grider is a native of Franklin County. He was born November 3, 1840, and moved with his father’s family into Williamson County in 1844 and into Marion in 1849.
In the 1850 census, James was 10 and living with his father and siblings. His father’s name was William M. Grider and listed himself as a house carpenter. Continue reading
Marion’s bloody history has been the subject of numerous books, articles and documentaries. “Bloody Williamson,” Paul M. Angle’s widely read story of our county, is still in publication after more than half a century. Perhaps one of the reasons for the intense curiosity about our past is the baffling contrast between the genuine warmth and friendliness of the people you meet today and the violent heartlessness of some who lived here just one or two generations ago. No story better illustrates this paradox than the tragedy of Lory and Ethel Price. Continue reading
The handwriting must have been on the wall for U.S. involvement in World War II prior to 1939 when war broke out in Europe. News articles from 1938 noted our vulnerability in placing our air corps bases and armament stockpiles in coastal locations. In those times, Southern Illinois had 61 percent of the population on welfare, one of the highest in the nation and more people in this end of the state were out of work than those working. Continue reading
The development of long range bombers by the Russians in the mid 1930’s put the U.S. government War Department on alert to its defense weaknesses and caused a scramble to relocate key bases and arsenal stockpiles from vulnerable coastal positions to more secure inland positions. This put Marion into the light of possibility for the manufacture and storage of a planned Chemical Warfare Arsenal. The project was planned to cost $21,000,000 and occupy 80,000,000 acres of land for the purposes of building, testing and storing chemical warfare agents. Continue reading