Marshall Public Library (Marshall, IL)

Aces softball team in 1940. They are shown in front of the Strand movie theater on the southeast corner of 5th and Locust Streets in Marshall. We are looking for more information about the name of the team. In the Marshall Public Library newspaper archives the team is listed as the Endicott Aces. But we have not been able to find any other articles in the archives directly connecting Mr. Endicott with the Strand Theater or the Aces team. There are, however, two mentions of him giving theater passes (no particular theater named) as prizes to a group of girls who had raised money for the blind at a flower show in 1938.

When we received this photograph there were names of the players that were in the picture on the back. We are hoping that some of the descendants of these players can help us connect the name of the team to the Strand Theater or provide any other information about the team.

The players’ names as printed are:

Front (l to r) Emer [sic] Haugh, Don Able, Everett English, Leon Cooper, Raymond (Bud) Abel, Bill Bubeck

Back (l to r) Charles Macke, Charles (Jr.) Haugh, Leroy (Shorty) Garner [sic], Lauf Forsythe, Dean English, Don Smitley, and Jim Stepp.

We believe that the two misspelled names should be Eamer Haugh and Shorty Gardner.

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).

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