Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial

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Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial, Illinois, USA
IUCN Category Ib (Wilderness Area)
Map of the U.S. state of Illinois showing the location of Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial
Location	Macon County, Illinois, USA
Nearest city	Harristown, Illinois
Coordinates	39°48′10″N 89°06′03″W / 39.80278, -89.10083
Area	162 acres (0.66 km²)
Established	1938
Governing body	Illinois Department of Natural Resources

The Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial is a 162-acre (0.65 km²) state park^[1] located on the Sangamon River in Macon County near Harristown, Illinois.

The state memorial contains the site of the 1830-1831 homestead of pioneer Thomas Lincoln and his family, including grown son Abraham Lincoln. It was here that Abraham split rails for his father's field, and also "hired out" to split rails for neighboring pioneer farmers, inspiring his later political nickname, the Rail Splitter. Split-rail fences were used by pioneer farmers to confine their stock, or to prevent free-range livestock from getting into and damaging a crop field.

The state memorial, created in 1938, now serves as a park and picnic area for the greater Decatur, Illinois metropolitan area. The park contains mature second-growth bottomland timber, including black walnut trees. The park was formally dedicated in 1957.^[2]

1 The Lincoln Cabin
2 The Whitleys
3 Lincoln's description
4 References
5 External links

[edit] The Lincoln Cabin

A marker at the site of Lincoln's first home in Illinois.

The Lincolns moved to the area March 1830 from Indiana and constructed a 16 x 16 foot log cabin on the site. The following winter was particularly harsh with lengthy periods of sub-zero temperatures and a six foot snowfall. The hard winter led the Lincolns to leave the area, with Abraham canoing down the Sangamon river stopping in New Salem, Illinois. See also:Abraham Lincoln's early life and career His parents intended to return to Indiana, but settled in Coles County, Illinois, northwest of Charleston. The cabin remained and became used as a school house and a farm building. It was ignored until 1865 when it was dismantled and shipped to Chicago then to Boston Common. After that, it was lost to history and its ultimate fate is unknown.^[2]

[edit] The Whitleys

A tablet marking Lincoln's First Home in Illinois.

After the Lincolns departed the area, it was settled by the Whitley family. The state memorial site contains the Whitley's pioneer cemetery and the remains of their flour mill and dam lie on the Sangamon river south of the cabin site.^[2]

[edit] Lincoln's description

Abraham Lincoln himself described his life at the Lincoln Trail Homestead State Memorial in this 1860 account, which he wrote for John L. Scripps of the Chicago Press and Tribune to be used as a campaign biography:

March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timberland and prairie, about ten miles westerly from Decatur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham.^[3]

The Sangamon River passing through the park and the remains of the Mill and dam at bottom. Viewed about 200 feet south of the monument from the top of the bluff.