Lincoln's New Salem, by Benjamin P. Thomas; drawings by Romaine Proctor from photographs by the Herbert Georg studio, Springfield.

NOTES

NOTES

"Grocery" was the frontier term for a saloon.

His first purchase was lot four south of Main Street in the first survey, his second was lot three, adjoining it on the south.

Offut bought lot fourteen north of Main Street in the first survey from William Batterton on September 2, 1831. Batterton had purchased it from Camron on January 14. When the village was resurveyed in 1932, it was found that Offut's store was not located on this lot, but a short distance to the north.

December 19, 1831, Whary paid $16 for lot twelve in the first survey. The record does not show whether it was north or south of Main Street.

On September 8, 1831, he paid $30 for lot five north of Main Street in the first survey. October 25, he paid $10 for lot one, adjoining it. His tavern license was issued on December 6, 1830.

The population of Illinois in 1830 was 157,445; that of Sangamon County, the area of which was twice what it is today, was 12,960, or about seven to the square mile. By 1840, the population of the state was 476,183, that of Sangamon County, reduced to its present size, was 14,716, about seventeen to the square mile. The population of Menard County in 1840 was 4,431, about eight to the square mile.

Burner paid $10 for lots two and three south of Main Street in the second survey on October 25, 1832.

Miller bought lots nine and ten north of Main Street in the second survey, and a piece of land adjoining to the north, on November 17, 1832. The purchase price was $25.

Regnier paid Sinco $20 for the west half of lot one north of Main Street in the first survey on October 10, 1832.

The following land transactions, not mentioned in the text, were consummated in 1832. On January 6, Edmund Greer bought lot one south of Main Street (survey not given) from Robert Melton for $50. The same day, Hill bought lot four north of Main Street in the first survey for $16. This was the lot on which his store was situated. May 9, John MacNamar paid $10 for the east half of lot five north of Main Street in the first survey. Alexander Trent bought lot thirteen (no further description given) on August 27, for $50. On November 2, Baxter B. Berry paid $10 for the east half of lots seven and eight south of Main Street in the second survey. On the

same day, Hill sold the west forty feet of his lot to George Spears for $26.66 ⅔. Robert McNeeley, Jonathan Dunn, a millwright, Johnson Elmore, and Caleb Carman, a shoemaker, were other New Salem residents.

Rutledge moved to Sand Ridge early in 1833. He died there on December 3, 1835. His widow and her family, except her son David, moved to Fulton County in 1836. From there they moved to Iowa.

September 4, 1834, Hill bought back from Spears for $50 the west forty feet of lot four. He had sold this to Spears in 1832. On April 8, 1833, he bought lot two north of Main Street in the second survey for $100.

R. Carlyle Buley, "Pioneer Health and Medical Practice in the Old Northwest," in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XX, 497 ff.

Buley, "Pioneer Health and Medical Practice in the Old Northwest."

In 1849, after he had moved to Iowa, Berry published a book of Lectures on the Covenants and the Right to Church Membership. While disputatious and like many religious books of that day con|cerned primarily with doctrine, the lectures attest the author's ability.

Herndon is authority for the statement that Lincoln served as clerk in this election. But the New Salem poll book, in the Illinois State Historical Library, shows that Mentor Graham and Abram S. Bergen were the clerks.

There are several versions of the Armstrong wrestling match. The one given here follows that given by William Dean Howells in his biography of Lincoln. In the summer of 1860, Lincoln read a copy of Howells owned by Samuel C. Parks, and at Parks' request made corrections in the margin. He made no correction or comment con|cerning Howells' description of the wrestling match.

The fact that local, state and congressional elections took place in August and the presidential election in November also tended to give national issues and figures a secondary importance in the former contests.

Lincoln's chief rival was William Kirkpatrick. It has been said that Lincoln once worked for him, that he cheated Lincoln out of part of his pay, and that Lincoln's friends determined to humiliate him by defeating him for captain. This story appears in W. D. Howells' Life of Lincoln and in other biographies. In correcting Parks' copy of Howells, Lincoln crossed out the passage telling of his having

worked for Kirkpatrick, and wrote in the margin, "'Wm. Kirk|patrick, I never worked for him.—L.'" It has also been claimed that Kirkpatrick resigned in disgust after his defeat; but the muster roll of the company shows that on April 10 he was promoted from the ranks.

Some authorities have considered this story improbable; but it is recorded in Howells, and was not contradicted by Lincoln when he made his corrections.

Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor and Jefferson Davis were other regular army officers in the Black Hawk War.

April 16, 1852, Lincoln was granted forty acres of land for his service in the Black Hawk War. The land was located in Iowa, by his attorney, John P. Davies, of Dubuque. On April 22, 1856, he received an additional grant of 120 acres, which he located in Crawford County, Iowa, on December 27, 1859.

At that time Sangamon County included the present counties of Sangamon and Menard, most of Logan and part of Christian and Mason. The returns were as follows:

Edmund D. Taylor

1127

John T. Stuart

991

Achilles Morris

945

Peter Cartwright

815

Archer G. Herndon

806

William Carpenter

774

John Dawson

717

Abraham Lincoln

657

Thomas M. Neale

571

Richard Quinton

485

Zachariah Peters

214

Edward Robinson

169

William Kirkpatrick

44

Howells, in his biography of Lincoln, said: "It is supposed that it was at New Salem that Lincoln, while a 'clerk' in Offut's store, first saw Stephen A. Douglas, and probably, the acquaintance was renewed during Lincoln's proprietorship of the store, which he afterwards bought in the same place." Upon reading this, Lincoln wrote in the margin: "Wholly wrong—I first saw Douglas at Van|dalia, December 1834,—I never saw him at New Salem."

By 1834, central Illinois was pretty well covered by mail routes. Besides the New Salem route, six others ran from Springfield to various places. One went to Vandalia; another to St. Louis via Jacksonville, Carrollton and Alton; a third to St. Louis via Carlin|ville and Edwardsville; a fourth to Peoria (where it joined another going to Ottawa and Chicago): a fifth to Terre Haute; and the sixth to Beardstown and Quincy.

26. Stamps were introduced by the Post Office Department in 1847, but did not come into general use until 1855.

Ross stated that Lincoln and Berry "kept the store in the same building with the post office." But Herndon says: "He made head|quarters in Samuel Hill's store, and there the office may be said to have been located, as Hill himself was postmaster before Lincoln."

Dr. Anson G. Henry, one of Lincoln's closest friends, and himself postmaster for a time at Sangamontown, told Isaac N. Arnold that when the New Salem office was discontinued Lincoln had on hand a balance of some sixteen or eighteen dollars which he brought with him when he moved to Springfield. Months passed before an agent of the Post Office Department called to collect this money. During the intervening time Lincoln had been financially hard-pressed, and Doctor Henry, who was present when the agent called, was afraid that Lincoln might not have the money. Henry told Arnold: "I was about to call him aside and loan him the money, when he asked the agent to be seated a moment, while he went over to his trunk at his boarding house, and returned with an old blue sock with a quantity of silver and copper coin tied up in it. Untying the sock, he poured the contents on the table and proceeded to count the coin, which consisted of such silver and copper pieces as the country-people were then in the habit of using in paying postage. On counting it up there was found the exact amount, to a cent, of the draft, and in the identical coin which had been received. He never used, under any circumstances, trust funds." This story and the entry in Carpenter's book may not be irreconcilable; but the entry makes the story doubtful.

An Act of Congress of March 3, 1825, provided that postmasters should receive per quarter thirty per cent of the receipts up to $100. Then, on any sum over and above the first $100 and not exceeding $400, twenty-five per cent; on sums over the first $400 but not ex|ceeding $2400, eight per cent. They also kept fifty per cent of the receipts from newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, while there was allowed "to postmasters whose compensation shall not exceed five hundred dollars in one quarter, two cents for every free letter de|livered out of the office, excepting such as are for the postmaster himself."

Calhoun was born in Boston, October 14, 1808. In 1821, he moved with his father to the Mohawk Valley. He attended Canajoharie Academy, and studied law at Fort Plain. In 1830, he came to Spring|field, where he resumed the study of law, teaching in a select school at the same time. He participated in the Black Hawk War, after

which he was appointed county surveyor. He was in the Legislature from 1839 to 1841, was appointed clerk of the Sangamon Circuit Court in the latter year, was mayor of Springfield from 1849 to 1851, and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress, the State Senate and the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. During Lincoln's first years in Springfield, Calhoun, at that time one of the strongest men in the Democratic party in the state, was an important factor in Lincoln's political development. He and Lincoln frequently en|gaged in impromptu street-corner discussions and sometimes in formal debate. He was a careful student of politics, whom Lincoln considered a more formidable antagonist than Douglas. Milton Hay believed that Lincoln's discussions with him "habituated the senten|tious, precise and guarded statement of political propositions for which Mr. Lincoln became so remarkable." Through Douglas' influence Calhoun was appointed surveyor-general of Kansas in 1854. In 1857, he was President of the Constitutional Convention at Lecompton. He died at St. Joseph, Mo., October 13, 1859.

Howells says that Lincoln, too poor to buy a complete outfit, used a grapevine instead of a chain, and Lincoln, in correcting Parks' copy, did not deny it. In his autobiography, however, Lincoln says that he "procured a compass and chain." Old surveyors claimed that a grapevine was as accurate as the old iron chains, whose links sometimes wore away to such an extent that they became several inches too long.

An Act of January 14, 1829, stated that it "shall be the duty of each county surveyor to provide himself with a well bound book, in which he shall carefully and legibly record and note down every survey made by him, giving therein the name of the person, the survey of whose land is so recorded, and describing as near as practicable, the metes and bounds of the land, and noting the date on which the survey was made: and such record shall be subject to the inspection of every person who may think himself interested." In the Sangamon County Recorder's Office there are two volumes of Surveyor's Records, beginning in 1841, but if Lincoln ever kept such a book it has not been found.

As a captain Lincoln was paid according to the regular army scale —$80 a month. Militia privates were paid $7.66 a month. Each cavalryman was allowed forty cents a day for the use of his horse, and twenty-five cents a day for rations and forage when he pro|vided these himself. Each man also received a bounty of $14 for enlisting.

By the time that Lincoln left New Salem in 1837 he had sufficiently

recovered from his financial reverses to buy two pieces of land. On March 6, 1836, he entered a forty-seven acre tract on the north bank of the Sangamon River in Crane Creek Township. He was probably not the sole owner, for when he disposed of the tract to Gershom Jayne on May 9, 1837, he gave only a quit-claim deed. On March 24, 1836, Lincoln bought two lots in Springfield for $50. Within a little more than a year he sold both of them at a good profit.

Neale was born in Forquier County, Virginia, in 1796. He moved to Kentucky, where he studied law. Coming to Sangamon County, he became a justice of the peace, was an officer in the Black Hawk War, and a candidate for the State Legislature in 1832 and 1834. He was elected county surveyor three times and held the office at his death on August 7, 1840.

In 1850, Lincoln wrote to Joseph Ledlie, asking him to survey certain parcels of land that Neale had bought and sold to see whether there was any land remaining that could be sold for the benefit of Neale's widow, who was in straitened circumstances. "If Mr. Ledlie will take an occasion to carefully make such a survey, and thus ascertain the truth," wrote Lincoln, "I will do as much for him, in the line of my profession, at his order. I am not expect|ing any compensation from Mrs. Neale."

New Boston was situated on the Mississippi, at the mouth of Henderson Creek. It was outside of Lincoln's territory, and he was probably hired to survey it by Elijah Iles of Springfield, one of the proprietors, or by Peter Van Bergen, who was Iles' agent.

In a speech at Bath on August 16, 1858, Lincoln recalled that twenty-two years ago "he had with his own hands staked out the first plat of this town of Bath, then a wooded wilderness." That was on November 1, 1836.

Lincoln surveyed the town of Albany on January 16, 1836. It was situated on Salt Creek, about five miles west of the present town of Lincoln.

Huron was surveyed on May 21, 1836. It was located at Miller's Ferry, the main crossing of the Sangamon between Springfield and Havana, and was to be the terminal point of a proposed Beardstown-Sangamon Canal. Among the proprietors were Stephen T. Logan, Gershom Jayne, John T. Stuart, Simeon Francis, Ninian Edwards and Samuel H. Treat. Lincoln entered 47 acres of land in the vicinity. (See note 34.) The town never had but one house—that of Samuel Watkins. The original plat of the town, drawn by Lincoln, is on exhibit at New Salem.

41. The official returns were as follows:

John Dawson

1390

Abraham Lincoln

1376

William Carpenter

1170

John T. Stuart

1164

Richard Quinton

1038

Andrew McCormick

694

William Alvey

613

Thomas M. Neale

514

Shadrick J. Campbell

192

James Shepherd

154

James Baker

130

John Durley

92

William Kendall

42

Total

8569

On January 31, 1833, he drew the bond by which David Rutledge agreed to convey a lot to Alexander and Martin S. Trent. Hertz, Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, II, 513. He drafted the mortgage given by Greene to Radford on January 15, 1833. Ibid., 514. On August 22, 1836, he wrote the will of Joshua Short. Ibid., 514-515.

It has been said that Lincoln discovered a copy of Blackstone at the bottom of a barrel of junk that he bought from a needy traveler simply to help him out. Howells says that Lincoln bought the book at an auction in Springfield and Lincoln let the statement go un|changed when he corrected the book.

Howells says that "Lincoln used to perform his journeys between New Salem and the seat of government on foot." In the margin, opposite this statement, Lincoln wrote: "No harm, if true; but in fact, not true. L."

She was buried originally in the old Concord Cemetery, north of Petersburg. In 1890, her remains were transferred to Oakland Cemetery, southwest of Petersburg.

For a critical examination of the basis of the story, see Paul M. Angle, "Lincoln's First Love?" in the Abraham Lincoln Association Bulletin Number 9, also Number 12.

It should be noted that, as Orville H. Browning explained to Isaac N. Arnold, this letter to Mrs. Browning "was written in the confi|dence of friendship, with no purpose, or expectation, that it would become public. . . . Neither Mrs. Browning nor myself ever knew from him who the lady referred to in the letter was." See the Abraham Lincoln Association Bulletin, Number 25.

The vote was as follows:

Abraham Lincoln

1716

William F. Elkin

1694

Ninian W. Edwards

1659

John Dawson

1641

Daniel Stone

1438

Robert L. Wilson

1353

Andrew McCormick

1306

John Calhoun

1278

Jacob M. Early

1194

Richard Quinton

1137

Thomas Winn

972

Aaron Vandiver

922

Michael Mann

913

George Power

905

James Baker

101

John L. Thompson

38

Yancy

12

Total

18,279

They were drawn respectively by W. H. Herndon, Mrs. Samuel Hill, T. G. Onstot, R. J. Onstot, J. McCan Davis and Henry C. Whitney.

The State of Illinois has published a Catalogue of New Salem Collection of Pioneer Relics, prepared by the Old Salem Lincoln League. This gives a description and history of each article of furniture.