Davis, Martin K. 1843-1936, Medal of Honor Recipient

Medal of Honor 1862According to available records, Martin K. Davis was born in Marion, Illinois on March 12, 1843. It is believed that Davis was orphaned at an early age. At age 19, he joined the 116th Illinois Infantry in August 1862 at Stonington, Christian Co., Illinois as a Private.

On May 22, 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered an assault on the Confederate heights at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The plan called for a storming party of volunteers to build a bridge across a moat and plant scaling ladders against the enemy embankment in advance of the main attack. Continue reading

Life on the Home Front During the Civil War

The following is taken from “Thy People Shall Be My People or Elizabeth Ann and the Roberts Clan” by Daisy Roberts Malone. These excerpts were written by Elizabeth Ann Chadwell who was born 10 May 1825, the daughter of John Shepherd and Sarah Clark. She married William Rufus Roberts 18 Aug 1841 and after his death married Charles W. Chadwell 9 Nov 1849, both marriages in Williamson Co., Illinois. Elizabeth Ann died 13 May 1916 and is buried in Zion Cemetery, Corinth, Illinois. Continue reading

1937, Marion’s Last Two Civil War Veterans

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

Hartwell, Lorenzo D. 1843-1925

LD Hartwell 1843-1925Lorenzo Dow Hartwell Jr. was born May 6, 1843, in Williamson County, Illinois, and reared on the paternal farm five miles northeast of Marion, Illinois. He was the eighth in order of birth and the seventh boy in a family of twelve children born to Lorenzo Dow Hartwell Sr. and Sicily Hodge. Lorenzo Sr. emigrated from Virginia with his family in 1839. Continue reading