In this week's Landmarks from DailySouthtown “Everyone likes a great, wonderful story about the pioneers — the wonderful people who found a new place. But it’s just not true.”
A photo of Watchekee, right, from the family collection of author George Godfrey, shown during a presentation Wednesday for the Homewood Historical Society.
The marker was placed near the site of Brownsville, a ghost town a few miles outside of Murphysboro, Illinois, that was once the Jackson County seat. Like many metal markers, the Conrad Will monument has since disappeared, though a new one was rededicated in 2016 on the lawn of the Jackson County Courthouse in Murphysboro.
“I’ve read he was a nice, fun-loving guy who was always smiling and had a joke for every occasion, and everyone liked him,” Vasko said. “That’s as much thought as the whole thing had.These days, “nobody knows who this guy is,” she said, and that’s OK with her. When the new Will County courthouse came into service, a plaque commemorating Conrad Will was removed from the side of the old building.
After the northeastern Illinois wilderness had been tamed and its Indigenous people were removed, he was one of the first people to quarry limestone in Thornton and was among the Chicago city fathers who helped make the Illinois and Michigan Canal a reality.That “princess,” Watchekee, eventually became the mispronounced namesake for Watseka, a city of about 5,000 people along Illinois Route 1 that’s the Iroquois County seat.
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