For more than a century, a good many of Iola’s dead have entered into their eternal rest beneath the shade of a granite marker hand-crafted by an employee of Williams Monuments. Williams remains one of the oldest small businesses in the state.
In 1906, Charles E. Williams Sr. purchased Palmer Marble & Granite Works at 214 West St. He called his establishment Williams Monumental and Marble Works. After three years, Williams moved the monument shop to 301 S. Washington Ave.
In 1936, he sold half of the Washington Avenue lot and built a new shop on the remaining half, at 11 W. Broadway, the present home of Williams Monuments.
“Mr. Williams is at his office every day,” claimed a Register reporter in 1930. “He supervises all erection work in the cemeteries…and is always ready to give of his time and services to those wishing to provide the best and most appropriate memorials for their loved ones.”
Of the permanency of the marble and granite memorials, “Mr. Williams points out that nothing short of an earthquake can destroy them.”
Williams died in 1937 and stewardship of the business fell to his wife and brother-in-law, Fred Steele, who was regarded as one of the finest monument craftsmen in the area and who remained with the Williams company until his retirement in 1969.
Charles Williams Jr. took over the firm in 1948 and the company’s name was officially shortened to Williams Monuments. In 1968, the younger Williams re-purchased the 301 S. Washington location — then occupied by Johnson Electrical Service — and turned it into a parking lot for customers.
During their run, the Williamses, father and son, superintended projects of significant meaning to the community, like the erection in Highland Cemetery of the 35-foot-tall American Legion monument — whose white Georgia marble didn’t so much as wobble when a tornado hit it soon after installation in the spring of 1922 — and the monument to Iola Colborn raised in the old cemetery in 1964.
During this period, most of Williams’ stone was cut and shipped from quarries in Georgia, Wisconsin and Vermont — especially the renowned Rock of Ages Corporation in Graniteville, Vt. — and then carved and lettered in Iola. The technology across those years shifted from the hand chisel to the sand blaster — to, today, when designs are executed from computer-generated stencils — but the level of craftsmanship never suffered.
In 1974, the younger Williams sold the business to Charles O. Barnett. Barnett had worked for Williams since 1971 as an engraver and designer.
In the fall of 2002, Iola-native Terry Ellis purchased the business. Ellis designed, engraved and installed the monuments for his customers, and would place special orders for locals who wanted to create from granite their own unique projects.
Ellis died on Sept. 29, 2017. He was 47.
In recent weeks, Williams Monuments was purchased by Feuerborn Family Funeral Service and relocated to 1883 US Highway 54.
Like Barnett and Ellis before him, Feuerborn’s director has decided to retain the resonant Williams Monuments name.
Iola company’s storied history recalled
