Marshall Public Library (Marshall, IL)

Those boots are smashing! What a great resource for researchers.

Burned Courthouse shell – A fire in the courthouse was discovered at 3:00 a.m. on December 31, 1902, by Officer Howard Handley and Mr. Allison, a night clerk at the Marshall House. They believed it must have been smoldering for several hours. The main theory about the source of the fire was that a meeting had been held in a room on the second floor the evening before, and it was believed that a cigarette or stub might have been mislaid. The roof and the floor and contents of the second story were completely destroyed, but the record books and most of the contents of the first floor were carried out of the building by volunteers and taken to several other buildings for safety.
Following the fire office space was rented in the Pythian Theater building and the Clark County Bank until a new courthouse could be built. This picture shows the remaining shell of the 1888 courthouse looking from south to north. The house in the background on the left is now the site of a laundromat and the building on the right was Grabenheimer’s (recently Tatum's).

The north east corner lot at Clinton (5th) and Main (Archer Avenue) Streets north of the courthouse in Marshall was unique because for many years it was the only lot on the 500 block of Main that did not have a business building. In 1838 a house was erected by Dr. Poole and served as a residence and doctor’s office for many years. It became the Shaw residence and after it was no longer used as a home it was used for several businesses until 1927 when the house was torn down and replaced by a filling station erected by the Ohio Oil division of the Lincoln Oil Refining Company of Robinson, Illinois. Several businesses followed including J’s Coin Laundry and Cooper’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning.