Robert E. McKinney was born December 26, 1902 in Crainville, Illinois. McKinney who was active in school affairs and followed in his father’s footsteps as County Superintendent of Williamson County schools spent 44 years in teaching and supervising duties. Continue reading
Category Archives: People
It’s hard enough to imagine going down into a coal mine to work equipped only with a carbide lamp strapped to your head, but imagine what it’s like to spend over a day crawling around in a pitch black mine trying to find your way out without any light at all. That is exactly what a Marion man experienced in 1937. Continue reading
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
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
Charles Wood Monroe was born on Sunday, Nov. 5, 1922, at home on South Future Street in Marion as the son of Charles Raymond and Ethel LaRue (Wood) Monroe.
Charles was educated in the Marion school system and graduated from high school with the class of 1940. After high school graduation Charles enrolled at Southern Illinois Normal University at Carbondale. The following year his high school sweetheart, Jacqueline Rott, the lady destined to be Mrs. Monroe, graduated from high school and also enrolled at SINU. Continue reading