Lost Towns of Illinois - Cardiff, Illinois.

Cardiff was a town located in Round Grove Township, Livingston County, Illinois. After discovering an underground coal deposit and a vein was sunk, people started building shelters, the beginning of the village of Cardiff in 1899. A relatively large town developed within months. 

The town, originally known as the north campus, was incorporated as the village of Cardiff in May 1900.

From March 12-16, 1903, a series of mine explosions killed nine mine workers. Three men remain entombed in the mine. 

A second mine was struck to the west, and mining operations resumed. 

More than 2,000 people lived in Cardiff at its peak. Cardiff had a church, a school, two banks, two-grain elevators, a semi-pro baseball team, a bottling plant, railroad passenger service, a hotel, sixteen saloons, and other businesses. Prosperity continued for Cardiff until the high-quality coal ran out and the Wabash railroad, the mine’s biggest customer, refused to buy low-grade Cardiff coal. 

The mine closed in 1912. A total of 18 men died in mine accidents in Cardiff.

Almost as fast as the town developed, it disappeared. Houses and other buildings were dismantled or moved whole. Today the town of Cardiff is gone yet remains a legally incorporated village. 

Two large hills of waste from the mine are monuments to the people who lived, worked, and died here. Dozens of acres that had been homes, stores, yards, and streets reverted back to farmland.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Barack Obama announces the groundbreaking ceremony for his presidential library in Chicago’s covenanted Jackson Park.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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Five years ago, then-President Barack Obama chose Chicago’s Jackson Park as the future site of his presidential center, stirring the South Side with the promise of long-overdue transformation and the distinction of being the place where the story of the nation’s first Black president and first lady is told.

On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, the Obamas will return to Chicago and at last kick off construction during a ceremonial groundbreaking with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, the Obama Foundation announced. The celebration follows a protracted journey that began in 2016 and, thanks to a confluence of obstacles, at times left supporters to wonder if dirt would ever be turned.

But with a date for the ceremony formally inked in, the Obama Presidential Center will take an important step toward its debut on the South Side, where Barack Obama was first elected to public office and Michelle Obama grew up.

“Michelle and I could not be more excited to break ground on the Obama Presidential Center in the community that we love,” Barack Obama said in a video posted Friday. “With your help, we can make the center a catalyst for economic opportunity, a new world-class destination on the South Side, and a platform for young people to drive change. So let’s celebrate Chicago.”

Obama Foundation President Valerie Jarrett agreed, saying next week’s ceremony also represents a milestone for the South Side.

“I spent my entire childhood and adulthood seeing the South Side overlooked,” Valerie Jarrett told the Tribune this past Monday. “For generations now, the South Side of Chicago hasn’t seen the kind of investment and attention that I think it deserves. So, long overdue, and I couldn’t be more proud that it is President and Mrs. Obama who decided to make this major investment in the South Side of Chicago.”

In pitching the vision of his presidential center, Obama sought to build a “living, breathing” campus that pays homage to the movement that made his historic presidency possible, Jarrett said — including in Chicago, where he served as a community organizer before finding his political star.

“This is not your parents’ or your grandparents’ presidential library,” Valerie Jarrett said. “This is a library of pointing really towards the future, that stands on the shoulders of our past.”

When Obama announced that historic Jackson Park, sandwiched between Lake Michigan and Woodlawn, would be the destination of his future presidential center, its opening day was scheduled for this year. But it would only be last month that shovels even hit the ground at the site, following a failed but lengthy legal effort to halt construction.

The hurdles to groundbreaking stemmed from Obama’s decision to place his presidential center at a park listed on the National Register of Historic Places and first mapped out in 1871 by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also co-designed New York’s, Central Park. The Jackson Park location, as well as the need to close and expand major adjacent streets, prompted a yearslong federal review that concluded this February.

However, that would not be the last the city and the Obama Foundation would hear from those who oppose the Jackson Park location. Protect Our Parks, a park preservationist nonprofit that unsuccessfully sued the city in 2018 to block the project, filed a second legal challenge the same day pre-construction roadwork began in April, this time regarding the legality of the federal review.

That lawsuit recently led to an emergency bid to block construction that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in August. Bulldozers soon descended on the site, though the plaintiffs maintain they still have legal options in their arsenal.

Amid the twists and turns that the decision to locate the campus at Jackson Park sparked, Jarrett, said the Obamas never doubted their choice.

“Hard things are hard,” said Jarrett, who has deep roots in Chicago and worked in the Obama White House. “The challenges presented were challenges that we were prepared to overcome, and we have. And so, no, I never heard a single time where President Obama wavered in his commitment to deliver this world-class center on this site and in this location.”

The $700 million presidential center is mostly dirt mounds now, but in four years there is to be a 235-foot-tall tower with a quote from Barack Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil-rights marches carved on the exterior. There will be a forum building and a plaza with public artwork open to members of the community to gather, as well as an athletic and recreation center.

A new branch of the Chicago Public Library will include on its roof a garden resembling Michelle Obama’s fruit and vegetable garden at the White House. And a playground, walking paths, and a sledding hill will adorn the park area surrounding the buildings.

Meanwhile, Obama Presidential Center Museum Director Louise Bernard, who also helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, said the team has been searching across the nation for the thousands of objects that will go into the artifact collection. But Bernard emphasized the artifacts are not a “time capsule” but a way to inspire future generations, including the young South Side visitors who might come to see themselves as a future president of the U.S.

“It’s not simply that the history is this thing that happened in the past to other people, or that the objects all live behind glass … but rather that the visitor feels themselves to be a social actor in the making of history,” Bernard said in a recent interview.

In newly revealed details, Bernard shared that the four floors of the museum will start with the first level portraying Obama’s childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia as well as his seminal years in Chicago with Michelle Obama and his first presidential campaign. The second floor will frame his administration’s tenure, beginning with its inheritance of an economic meltdown and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the third floor will be a homage to the diversity of the different groups of people who worked at the Obama White House, and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office will be open for visitors to walk through. And finally, the last floor will symbolize Obama’s “passing of the baton” to the next generation of leaders in his farewell address in Chicago, Bernard said.

“It’s a story that’s connected, obviously, to Chicago,” Bernard said. “It’s really rooted in the South Side of Chicago broadly. … As much as the kind of central narrative arc is about the Obama presidency, it is also about all of the people who made his journey possible.”

By Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune, Sept 24, 2021

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Abraham Lincoln Centennial Celebrations in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, 1909.

In 1909 many nations and communities in the U.S. celebrated the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The Centennial Celebration Committee of New York City asked City Hall for $25,000 ($742,000 today) in 1908 for the event. 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Chicago organized a committee of 100 citizens, who raised $40,000 ($1.2 million today) to sponsor a week-long celebration to outdo the efforts of any other city in the United States as an example of patriotism.

Exterior view of Marshall Field & Co. department store entrance at 111 North State Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, draped with United States flags and stars and stripes bunting, with a horse-drawn carriage by the curb in front. Pedestrians are walking along the sidewalk. Text on the negative reads: Lincoln decorations. The bottom left corner of the negative is broken off, 1909. 

Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store at 1 North State Street in Chicago is decorated for Lincoln's 100th birthday in 1909.

Friday, February 12, 1909, was the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The current president, Theodore Roosevelt, was marking the occasion at the Lincoln Birthplace in Kentucky. Congress was talking about issuing a new penny to honor Lincoln. There were celebrations throughout the nation.

In Chicago, the festivities were elaborate. The city had never been home to a president. But Lincoln had been a lawyer in Springfield, a citizen of Illinois. To older people, he was still fresh in memory.

February 12th was proclaimed a state holiday. Schools were closed, and so were government offices. Most businesses shut down. Newspapers printed special Lincoln supplements—the Chicago Tribune included a full-page portrait “suitable for framing.”

CLICK FOR A FULL-SIZE POSTER

At 10 a.m., the day’s opening ceremony was held at the Auditorium. The featured speaker was Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University. He said that Lincoln was a true Man of the People. “The man Lincoln had no special gift,” Wilson declared. “He seemed slow of development, waited upon circumstances to quicken him, but always responded, on whatever level the challenge came.”

The Auditorium meeting closed with a chorus of 300 high school girls singing Civil War songs. Then the audience stood and cheered while the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic marched out of the building.

The day went on, with dozens of events. The First Church of Englewood presented music and lectures. Negro Chicagoans met at the Seventh Regiment Armory to hear readings of Lincoln's speeches. At the Hull House, Jane Addams gave a stereopticon (a slide projector that combines two images to create a three-dimensional effect) lecture on Lincoln’s life. In Crystal Lake, Illinois, a mass meeting was addressed by Major Henry Rathbone (1837-1911), who was Lincoln’s theater guest the night John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head.

Everyone wanted to get into the act. Lincoln celebrations were staged by the Hungarian Societies of Chicago, the Chicago Women’s Press Club, the Chicago Hebrew Institute, the Catholic Order of Foresters, the Chicago Veteran Druggists Association, the National Good Roads Congress, and so on.

The largest gathering came at the end of the day. Over 10,000 people jammed into the Dexter Park Pavilion, next door to the Union Stock Yards. They listened to speeches, they sang, they shouted—“they gave vent to their patriotism,” the Chicago Tribune wrote.

The Lincoln Centennial closed, and Chicago returned to normal. Four years and one month later, the Auditorium headliner, Woodrow Wilson, was inaugurated as President of the United States.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

Another grand celebration took place in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois. There, the Lincoln Centennial Celebration, sponsored by the Lincoln Centennial Association (later renamed the Abraham Lincoln Association), was a great meeting and banquet serving 850 guests in the Illinois State Armory, the same place that was used the previous August as a refuge for negro families seeking safety from rioters.

The Lincoln Centennial Association banquet in honor of Lincoln's 100th birthday, held Friday, February 12, 1909, in Illinois State Armory.

The Springfield organizers had invited Booker T. Washington to speak, among others, but he had already committed to the New York celebration.

Lincoln Centennial; addresses delivered at the memorial exercises held at Springfield, Illinois, February 12, 1909. (pdf)

A memorial tablet marking the old Lincoln law office site was unveiled at 109 North Fifth Street in Springfield, Illinois.

Major John W. Black's Report of the Memorial Tablet Committee:

The undersigned committee of the Springfield chapter of the Illinois society of the Sons of the American Revolution, to whom was assigned the duty of providing and placing a memorial tablet for marking the site of the first law office of Abra ham Lincoln, desire to report that a suitable bronze tablet has been secured and placed in position at 109 North Fifth street, Springfield, Ill. 

The committee beg leave to present in this connection some information concerning the location of the three law offices occupied by Mr. Lincoln in Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln's first law partnership was with Major John T. Stuart, under the firm name of Stuart & Lincoln, and their office was in Hoffman's row on the west side of Fifth street, between Washington and Jefferson streets, and the site of this building is now 109 North Fifth street, where the tablet has been placed.

The second floor was used by Stuart and Lincoln as a law office in 1837, 1838 and 1839.

When the state capital was removed from Vandalia to Springfield in the winter of 1836, the old county court house that stood in the public square was torn down to make room for the new capitol building, now known as the Sangamon county building. The ground floor of the Hoffman rowwas used for the Sangamon county court for a term of four years.

After the election of Major John T. Stuart to Congress, in 1838, Mr. Lincoln formed a partner ship with Stephen T. Logan, under the firm name of Logan & Lincoln, and occupied an office on the third floor of the old Farmers National bank building on the southwest corner of Sixth and Adams streets.

The United States court over which Judge Nathaniel Pope then presided as district judge occupied the second floor of said building.

The firm of Logan & Lincoln was dissolved in 1843 and Mr. Lincoln then formed a partnership with William F. Herndon, under the firm name of Lincoln & Herndon, and occupied offices on the second floor over the store of John Irwin, 103 South Fifth street, which is now the south half of the Myers Brothers clothing store. 

The partnership of Lincoln & Herndon continued during Mr. Lincoln s term of office as President and was only dissolved by the death of Mr. Lincoln April 15, 1865.

Commemorative Centennial ribbons like this one
featuring Lincoln’s portrait framed beneath
a bronze eagle was very popular

Lincoln Centennial, Program of celebrations during Lincoln week at the Chicago Hebrew Institute, 485 West Taylor Street, on February 10-11-12-13, 1909, Yiddish programs for adults and included one for teens and one for children.
CLICK FOR THIS BOOKLET IN PDF.

Curiously, the 1909 Lincoln Centennial Celebration banquet in Springfield excluded negroes—the infamous Springfield race riots had erupted on August 14, 1908, just months before—and the banquet occurred during the temperance movement. Yet the Springfield affair was extravagant and included wine, but it was reported that there would be at least six dry tables. Guests would show their temperance inclinations by turning glasses upside down.

ADDITIONAL READING: 
   How Negroes in early Springfield Influenced Lincoln's views on race.
   Abraham Lincoln – Friend of the Jewish People.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Account of Captain Edwin Eliaphron Bedee, in the Union army who was part of the historic tragedy witnessed President Lincoln get shot at Ford's Theatre.

Captain Edwin Bedee (1837-1908)

Captain Bedee was seated in the second row on the left side of the theatre in the back of the orchestra. A commanding view could be had of President Abraham Lincoln watching the play. The sound of a shot rang out above the actor's voice on stage. Captain Edwin Bedee stared as a man vaulted from the President's box onto the stage.

Little did  Edwin Bedee, 12th Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers, know when he enlisted, August 18, 1862, in Meredith, New Hampshire, that he would witness the tragic shooting of one of American's greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, on the fateful day of April 14, 1865.

When Captain Bedee saw the man drop onto the stage from the President's box, his first reaction was to pursue the fleeing assassin. Instead, Bedee, like the rest, listened as Booth boldly uttered the incredible words, "Revenge for the South!"

Sensing a catastrophe, Captain Bedee sprang from his chair, climbed over some rows, bolted past the orchestra and footlights, and across the stage in the direction Booth had disappeared.

A scream shattered the mounting noise. "They've got him!" Bedee presumed the assassin was caught. Another scream. It was Mrs. Lincoln.

"My husband is shot!" A doctor was called for. Captain Bedee reeled around and bounded across the stage towards the box. As he was scaling the box, a man appeared and stated he was a physician. Captain Bedee stepped aside, pushed the doctor up to the railing, and followed directly behind. Had the Captain not given assistance to the surgeon, he would have been the first to reach Lincoln. The only entrance to the box was believed locked by Booth when he slipped in to do his foul act, which apparently kept anyone from hastily entering from the outside passageway.

President Lincoln lay reclined in his chair, his head tilted back as though he were asleep. The doctor searched for the wound seeking some evidence of blood or torn clothing, the surgeon started to remove Lincoln's coat and unbutton his vest. Meanwhile, Captain Bedee was holding the president's head. Suddenly, he felt a warm wetness trickling into his hand. "Here is the wound, doctor," Captain Bedee said as one of his fingers slid into the hole in the back of Lincoln's head where the ball had only moments before forced an entry.

During the removal of some of the president's clothing, papers fell from his pocket. Mrs. Lincoln, apparently rational in spite of the shock of the calamity handed the packet to Captain Bedee remarking, "You are an officer, and won't you take charge of these papers?" Captain Bedee took the papers while she removed others from her husband's inner pocket and placed them in Dedee's hand.

By now others had gained entrance to the box through the door. One was a surgeon. Together the two doctors worked over the President and then Lincoln was removed to the house across the street from the theater, Bedee helped carry the dying man. He waited at the house where Secretary of War Stanton was soon to arrive. Upon the Secretary's arrival, Captain Bedee delivered the papers to him writing his own name and regiment upon the wrapper which Stanton placed around the documents. Secretary Stanton gave the Captain two assignments: first to go to the War Department with a message, and secondly, to contact the officer in command at Chain Bridge on matters dealing with the escaping assassin.

When the missions were completed Captain Bedee returned to Stanton. The Secretary thanked him for his diligence in handling the duties assigned to him and also for caring for the President's papers. He was then told to return to his post of duty.

The following day Captain Bedee was with his regiment. That evening an officer brought an order for the Captain's arrest. Apparent misunderstanding of the connections between Bedee, Lincoln's papers, and the assassination had made him a suspect within the War Department. Captain Bedee was so distraught that he telegraphed the department explaining the situation.

For two days Captain Bedee was kept under arrest. Finally, his release came, with an explanation of the confusion. Immediately the Captain wrote Secretary Stanton a personal letter stating that his honorable record during the war years would now have a very serious blemish if the details were not clarified. The Secretary wrote back explaining the error caused by the lower echelon in his department and gave proper acknowledgment to Captain Bedee for the commendable acts performed by him in the handling of Lincoln's papers. Thus the good captain was completely exonerated from any suspicious association with the murder of President Lincoln.

How did Captain Bedee happen upon this sorrowful moment of American history?

Edwin Bedee was born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, and grew up in the area. he was a printer by trade prior to the war. At 24 he enlisted and spent three months in a New York regiment but hastily returned to Meredith upon his release to join the 12th Volunteers, wanting to be with fellow New Hampshire men.

Mustered in as a sergeant major of the regiment, Bedee was soon promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. At the battle of Chancellorsville, he was wounded and yet assumed command of his regiment when those higher in command were either killed or unable to lead.

At Chancellorsville, Bedee's ability to make decisions under the pressure of battle was recognized, and he was promoted to captain. A year later, at Cold Harbor, Virginia, Captain Bedee was severely wounded. Recovering from his wounds, Bedee went back to action. This time he was captured at Bermuda Front, Virginia. He was paroled in February of 1865. Shortly thereafter, Captain Bedee was selected to serve on the staff of General Potter and went to Washinton on special duty. On Friday evening, April 14, 1865, be decided to attend Ford's Theatre.

The play was "Our American Cousin." It was being performed for the last time. Captain Bedee was fortunate to obtain a seat for the house was sold out. In fact, his seat gave him a full view of the President's box and its occupants. Because the audience was laughing at the antics on stage at the time, few heard the shot that felled the President.

A month after this tragic and involved affair, Captain Bedee was promoted to the rank of Major. Soon he was mustered out of the army along with his regiment.

When the war was over, Major Bedee caught the speculating craze and was lured to the South African diamond fields. But within a few years, he sold out, returning to Boston, and established himself as a successful diamond trader.

During his later years, Major Bedee, now a man of moderate wealth gave generously to the churches and other institutions in the town of Meredith. He purchased a statue in honor of the 12th Regimental Volunteers and had it placed on the lawn of the Meredith Public Library.

Major Bedee died at the famous Pemigewassett House in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on January 13, 1908, just five days after his 71st birthday. He never married. His body lies in the Meredith cemetery beneath a simple monument.

Little, if any, recognition has even been given Major Bedee in many accounts written on Lincoln's death because his role was that of a dutiful officer acting in a crisis. Had the circumstances surrounding Lincoln's personal and official papers not been so minor in the wake of such a tragic event, Major Bedee might have become nationally exposed as a suspect in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. His innocence brought oblivion.

A typical style of many Civil War statues. Major Edwin E. Bedee's monument to the 12th New Hampshire Volunteer Regiment has a colorful history. The regiment participated in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War, including Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. Local soldiers reportedly sustained the highest percentage of casualties of any unit in the Union Army. Major Bedee himself was injured twice and later spent several months in a Rebel prison camp. Bedee paid for the statue because he wished "to keep alive the memory of our fallen brave."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Reuben Moore Home in Campbell, Illinois, within the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.

Moore Home Historical Site, Farmington, Illinois—fully restored the way it would have been in 1861.

John Adams laid out this land in Pleasant Grove Township in 1852 hoping to build a town. Lots were available to anyone who could afford them. First named Farmington after Mrs.Adams’ Tennessee birthplace, this name was not officially recognized as there was already a Farmington in Fulton County. Campbell became the official name after Zeno Campbell moved the nearby post office into town shortly after its organization. The town has since been known by both names, Farmington and Campbell.

An artist conception of Farmington Illinois from an 1869 plat map.

1. Moore Home - Built in the 1850s by Reuben Moore, Owned by the Inyart family.
2. W.H. Halbrook - One of the original houses dating to the 1860s.
3. Presbyterian Church - The location of the second building, built in 1866.
4. J.J. Adams - An original house dating to the 1850s or 1860s and owned by the town founder.
5. Dr. G. Halbrook - Probably where this doctor lived and practiced.
6. Store - May have been run by Halbrook and Reed.
7. Seminary - Built in 1853, used as a school and church, then later as a store.
8. Store - Probably owned by Leander Burlingame.
9. Matilda Moore lived in a log house here by 1869.
10. Dr. Melson Freeman - Original house owned by the Freemans from 1863 until they moved to Charleston in 1893.
11. Methodist Church - Location of Church built in 1860, current church dates to 1920s.

Farmington enjoyed its heyday in the 1870s when it had grown to about 100 residents. It boasted four stores, a carriage shop, blacksmith shop, steam flour mill, school, and two churches. The boom days, however, were short-lived. When the railroad passed up Farmington in favor of Jamesville a few miles to the south, local residents moved elsewhere. Today, only a few houses and a church remind passersby of the village.

One of the houses built in the town of Farmington in the 1850s was the house belonging to Reuben Moore. Moore was a well-to-do landowner involved in farming and land speculation. He and his first wife Mary emigrated to Coles County in 1839. In 1840, he traded 80 acres of land to Thomas Lincoln, which today is Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site. After his wife Mary died in 1855, Reuben married Matilda "Tildy" Anne Johnston Hall, Abraham Lincoln’s stepsister.

The Moore Home is a frame house constructed from rough-sawn 2x4 framing, lathe and plaster interior, and clapboard siding. Reuben Moore owned four city lots in Farmington. This included lot numbers 14, 15, 16, and 17, bordered on the east by Main Street, on the west by Washington, and by Jefferson on the north. Many people kept livestock in town so owning several lots was not uncommon. Space was also needed for a kitchen garden and a small orchard. Our concept of space within a town today is much different than that of the 1850s.

THE MOORE HOME CONNECTION TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The Moore Home prior to 1930s restoration.

On January 31, 1861, president-elect Abraham Lincoln visited the Moore Home and Coles County for the last time before his inauguration as president of the United States. Sarah Lincoln was staying with her daughter Matilda Johnston Hall Moore in Farmington while repairs were being made to the cabin at Goosenest Prairie. Lincoln visited his father’s grave at Shiloh Cemetery while the women of the town “brought their nicest cakes and pies, baked turkeys, and chickens” to the Moore Home. He found upon his return “tables set clear from one end of the house to another,” filled with food for a grand dinner. After dinner, Lincoln bid farewell to his stepmother. She embraced him and said, “My dear boy, I always thought there was something great in you.” He returned to Charleston that night in order to catch the train to Springfield the next day.

THE MARRIAGE OF REUBEN AND MATILDA

Reuben Moore married Matilda Johnston Hall on June 19, 1856. There were six children in the family, three from Reuben’s previous marriage and two from Matilda’s. A sixth child, named Giles, was born to Reuben and Matilda in 1856. The marriage of Reuben and Matilda was not a happy one, for when he died in July of 1859, he had all but disowned her. Matilda sued Moore’s estate for her “dower rights” and won title to the house and one-third of Moore’s estate. Miles Moore, Reuben’s oldest son, inherited most of the remainder of his father’s property.

THE SMOKEHOUSE SHED BEHIND THE HOUSE

The smokehouse was used to smoke meats after at-home butchering of a hog. It was common to use hickory wood to flavor the hams, bacon, and such.

The Smokehouse behind the Moore house.

THE RESTORATION

Inside views of the Moore Home show it as a very colorful and beautiful little house. It is quite a contrast to the 1845 log homes on and near Thomas Lincoln's Farm Site.

In an era when log homes with fireplaces dotted the countryside, the Moore Home represented a more urban style of home. It has plaster walls, clapboard siding, wood-burning stoves, and balloon frame construction. 

The hearth and mantle of the living room are very warm and inviting. Note the stencil designs, not wallpaper, on the walls.

A rope mattress bed with a quilt.

The home consists of four rooms and a loft furnished to show the living conditions of a middle-class family after the Civil War. The State of Illinois acquired the Moore Home in 1929. The Civilian Conservation Corps renovated the home in the 1930s. At that time, the original brick foundation piers were replaced with a concrete foundation and the frame was built with a sag to make the house look “old." 

The Kitchen Stove.

The dining area of the kitchen.

The carpet is made up of woven rug squares. The furniture is like what would be used in the house in 1861.

Beginning in 1996, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency restored the house to its original appearance, complete with a brick foundation, no sagging floor, correctly-sized windows, stenciled walls, and painted exterior.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

My Photographs and Story about the Lincoln Funeral Reenactment on May 2, 2015, in Springfield, Illinois.

I attended the Lincoln Funeral reenactment in Springfield, Illinois on May 2, 2015. The funeral reenactment began with the amazing replica of the funeral train hearse car with a replica of President Lincoln's coffin, and an exact replica of the original horse-drawn hearse.

The Staab Family Livery of Springfield, Illinois, in association with the lead builder and recreation craftsman Jack G. Feather, of the Tombstone Hearse Company in Tombstone, AZ. Feather had gathered historians and expert craftsmen to recreate this historic vehicle. It was the centerpiece of the 150th Anniversary commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s entombment and celebration of his life and legacy.

I was given a VIP pass by Dr. Samuel Wheeler, the Director of Research and Collections for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation in Springfield, and later the Illinois State Historian.

I was given this brass 1865-2015 Lincoln 150 Year Funeral Reenactment, Lapel Pin.

Arriving early, I was able to gain entry to the staging area allowing me to take some photographs away from the gathering crowds.

In order to be historically accurate, all military participants will be in Union uniforms. Reenactors from the Confederate States may attend but they were asked to come as Union soldiers or to portray civilians. Special permission was needed to portray any historical person. There must have been at least 10,000 people, both reenactors, and civilians. 

I spoke with photographer Robert Taunt, a historical reenactor from La Crosse, Wisconsin, representing the Mathew Brady Photographic Studio. He was using an authentic 1860s stereo camera to document the funeral procession, along with the modern 3-D camera on the tripod. I gave him my business card to send me some of the photos he took.

Robert Taunt shooting stereo photographs that produce stereoscopic view cards. Stereograph photography became extremely popular in the 1850s. Cameras and view cards were sold commercially in the thousands. Their popularity waned slightly in the 1880s but commercial companies such as Underwood & Underwood repopularised them in the 1890s.

Abraham Lincoln Springfield Funeral Stereograph. A very rare stereoview on an orange mount, identified as "Funeral of Lincoln at Springfield Ill." The image shows the coffin being carried in a six-horse wagon, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers on May 2, 1865. Soldiers with rifles line the parade route, keeping spectators back. Flags are furled or flown at half-staff, while people stand on roof-tops to get a better view of the procession. Lincoln was buried on May 3rd.

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A young boy volunteers as a street sweeper, following horses in the precession.

Copyright © 2015, Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. All rights reserved.