Museum of Science and Industry changing name to "Julius Rosenwald Industrial Museum."

The Museum of Science and Industry will now be called the "Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry" following a donation of $125 million from the Chicago billionaire. The museum's board honored Ken Griffin by amending his name to the museum.

It's the most significant single gift in the museum's history, which opened in 1933.

The museum was incorporated as the Julius Rosenwald Industrial Museum but renamed the Museum of Science and Industry in 1928—five years before it opened—because Rosenwald did not want his name on the museum.

"This incredibly generous gift helps ensure Museum of Science and Industry. Remains a vital resource for science learning well into the 21st century," the museum announced on its website. It explained that renaming the museum "was the most appropriate way to convey our gratitude for this gift." Griffin is the wealthiest man in Illinois.
The museum also insisted its mission will not change as a result of the donation, part of which will go toward a new "Pixel Studio," which is called "a state-of-the-art digital gallery and performance space that will be the only experience of its kind in North America.

"The purpose of this gift is to allow us to continue the great work we do to support our mission and vision," the museum's statement said. "MSI's mission will remain the same as it has always been: to inspire the inventive genius in everyone, and we are grateful for this gift, which will help ensure the Museum remains a vital resource for science learning well into the 21st century."

Private support for the museum 2018 totaled $19 million, up $3 million from the previous year.

By Mitch Dudek, Chicago Sun-Times, October 3, 2019
Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

---

Kenneth C. Griffin - Chicago Philanthropy

• Griffin had contributed millions to the Art Institute of Chicago, public education, the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Griffin also contributed to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the "Evolving Planet" at the Field Museum of Natural History, and endowed professorships at the University of Chicago. 

• In October 2006, the Griffins and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded and supported the opening of Woodlawn High School, a new charter school in Chicago.

• In 2007, Griffin donated a $19 million addition designed by Renzo Piano to the Art Institute of Chicago.

• In October 2009, Griffin and his wife founded the Kenneth and Anne Griffin Foundation. The foundation's contributions include $10 million for the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center, $16 million for Children's Memorial Hospital, and total funding for the University of Chicago's Early Childhood Center.

• In December 2016, Griffin gave $12 million to the Chicago Park District to help fund separate paths for cyclists and pedestrians along the city's 18-mile lakefront.

• In November 2017, the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund made a new $125 million gift to support the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, which he was honored with the department being renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.

• A $16.5 million donation allowed the Field Museum to purchase a cast of the largest dinosaur ever discovered in 2018, a 122-foot-long Argentinian titanosaur named Máximo.

• In October 2019, the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund announced a $125 million gift to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the largest gift in the museum's history. The museum intends to change its name to the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. 

• In 2024, Kenneth C. Griffin donated $125 million to the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum's name was changed to Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

Frances Willard was the first Dean of Women at Evanston's Northwestern University and long-time President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was born on September 28, 1839, in Churchville, New York. She lived there with her parents, Josiah Willard and Mary Thompson Hill Willard, and her older brother Oliver, until 1841 when the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio. In 1846 the family, with the addition of sister Mary, moved to southeastern Wisconsin to a farm near Janesville. Willard spent most of her childhood there. She was almost entirely educated at home by her mother, but did attend a one-room school for a short time and then Milwaukee Female College for one term.

Frances Willard at 23 years old.

In 1858, at age 18, Willard moved with her family to Evanston to attend North Western Female College, a Methodist-affiliated secondary school, (not affiliated with Northwestern University). She graduated in 1859 and began a teaching career that included both one-room schools in nearby towns and, as her reputation grew, more prestigious positions in secondary schools in Pennsylvania and New York. During this time she was engaged to Charles Henry Fowler, an Evanston resident, and classmate of her brother, and later had a romance with a fellow teacher at Genessee College in New York. Neither relationship culminated in marriage, though, and Willard remained single throughout her life.

In 1871 Willard became president of the newly formed Evanston College for Ladies. When this college merged with Northwestern University in 1873, Willard became the first Dean of Women of the Women’s College. In 1874, after months of disagreement with university President Charles Henry Fowler (her former fiancé) over her governance of the Women’s College, Willard resigned. That summer she began to pursue a new career in the fledgling woman’s temperance movement, traveling to the east coast and participating in one of the many crusades. When she returned to Evanston, she was asked to be president of the Chicago group supporting the crusades.

In November 1874 Willard participated in the founding convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and was elected the first corresponding secretary of the WCTU. As such she was given the task of corresponding with and traveling to many of the small towns and cities in the United States, working to form local Unions and build support for the WCTU’s cause. In 1877 she met Anna Gordon and asked her to be her personal secretary. Gordon was a great help to Willard for the rest of her life, providing key organizational expertise as well as friendship. Willard worked hard during these early years to broaden the WCTU’s reform movement to include such things as woman’s suffrage, woman’s rights, education reforms, and labor reforms. She later became an anti-lynching advocate as well. The support for this broader view of the WCTU’s reform work became clear when Willard was elected President of the WCTU in 1879.

Under Willard’s leadership, the WCTU grew to be the largest organization of women in the nineteenth century. She saw the WCTU both as a means for accomplishing societal reform and as a means for training women to accomplish this reform. She urged WCTU members to become involved in local and national politics, to advocate for the causes in which they believed, to make speeches, write letters, sign and distribute petitions, and do whatever they could (since they couldn’t vote) to create support for change. She also saw the WCTU as part of a wider reform movement, especially regarding issues of alcohol and woman’s suffrage, and created a broad network of friends and coworkers who advocated for the same reforms as she did.

Frances Willard in the 1890s.

After her mother died in 1892, Willard began to suffer from increasing ill-health and began to spend more time abroad, staying in England at the home of her friend Lady Isabel Somerset and working on founding of the World’s WCTU from there. Her absence from the United States raised questions about her ability to lead the National WCTU, but support for her leadership never entirely faded. Willard was by this time one of the most famous women in the world, and through her, the WCTU was able to mobilize women and gain the support of men for their causes. By this time the WCTU had a membership of 150,000 and was considered a powerful force in social reform.

In late 1897, Willard’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. She went on a pilgrimage to her birthplace in Churchville, New York and her childhood home in Janesville, Wisconsin, and returned briefly to the house in Evanston. In February 1898, she was preparing to sail to England to stay with Lady Isabel Somerset when she fell ill with influenza in New York City. She died in the Empire Hotel on February 17, 1898, at the age of fifty-eight. Many were stunned by the suddenness of Willard’s death. Accolades from around the world poured in and Willard’s funeral in New York City, as well as the memorials held in towns between New York and Chicago, where her casket was returned for burial, were crowded with mourners. She lay in state in the WCTU headquarters building in downtown Chicago for one day and twenty thousand mourners paid their respects. After a ceremony in Evanston at the Methodist Church, her remains were cremated and her ashes were placed in her mother’s grave in Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

This statue of Frances Willard was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol by the State of Illinois in 1905. Her statue was the first honoring a woman to be chosen for the collection. Artist: Helen Farnsworth Mears

History of the Frances Willard House Museum
The history of the Willard house tells the fascinating story of the flexible use of a house as a private residence, dormitory, workspace, memorial, and museum. Its rooms were constantly adapted to the present needs of their occupants. Frances Willard began this tradition by re-using her father’s office as her own, and then later moving to the maid’s room and giving her office to Anna Gordon. She continued this with the construction of the Annex for her brother’s family, and when the Annex was no longer needed as a residence, she adapted it for use as office and dormitory space for the WCTU. When she died, the WCTU, through Anna Gordon, continued this tradition, moving their headquarters to the house, and adapting the private rooms as a memorial to Willard’s life. After a new headquarters building was built behind the house, the house began to be used as a museum and residence for the WCTU.

Frances Willard House Museum and Archives.

After Frances Willard died in 1898, during the President’s Address in the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting in October 1899, it was determined that WTCU Headquarters be moved to the Annex (where they remained until 1922 when they relocated to the new headquarters built on the west side of the property, behind Rest Cottage). Noting the significance of Rest Cottage for the WCTU, Lillian M. N. Stevens (the WCTU president after Willard), spoke of the house as a holy place, one befitting pilgrimages from WCTU devotees:

"It is a privilege that cannot be too highly estimated that our national offices should be there, that our prayers, our plans, and our daily work…should have the consecration of such surroundings and that Rest Cottage should thus continue to be the center from which our influence as an NWCTU can most widely radiate, a Mecca for the prayerful thought and devoted love of white ribboners everywhere."

In the spring of 1900 invitations were sent out to hundreds of people formally inviting them to the opening of the new WCTU headquarters at Rest Cottage. More than 200 people attended the ”Dedicatory Service” held Saturday afternoon, April 21, 1900, at 3pm. Newspaper reports from the time described the opening, the prayer service and speeches were given, and also the new offices. They also described a tour of parts of the house that had up until then been private rooms. Although the invitations had not announced it, Rest Cottage was officially opened as a museum of and memorial to the life of Frances Willard that day. The newspapers reported that the south side of the house, especially the “Den” where “most of the famous white-ribboner’s literary work was done,” was being kept “in the condition in which Miss Willard left it” and was now open for public viewing.

The house served as headquarters for the WCTU until 1910 when the ”Literature Building” was constructed on a back portion of the lot behind the house. All of the offices for the WCTU were moved into the new building. The first floor of the north side of Willard house was converted into a museum of WCTU artifacts and archival materials, and the second floor was used as bedrooms for WCTU workers. The south side of the house continued to be used as a museum of Willard’s private life, and the residence of Anna Gordon. The house continued to be used in this manner until Gordon’s death in 1931. The first floor remained as museum space, but the second-floor bedrooms, on both the south and north-sides, were then used as sleeping space for WCTU workers.

It is the goal of the Frances Willard Historical Association, established in 1994 to care for and manage the house, and to tell all of the stories of Willard House. Frances Willard House Museum and Archives are located at 1730 Chicago Avenue in Evanston Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Labor and Industry Museum in Belleville Illinois.

I visited the Belleville, Illinois, Labor & Industry Museum several times. It was an excellent little museum with many Belleville-made stoves, heaters, industrial machines and memorabilia. I was invited to sit with a couple of old guys as they slurped down their coffee and take part in a history lesson about how the Military men that came home from the Black Hawk War of 1832 banded together some years later and headed for California, to find a fortune in gold (Before the official gold rush in 1848). News articles were coming out of California and Oregon, and apparently, after panning for gold, some men returned to Belleville after a couple of years... Filthy Rich... but complaining was the most demanding work they ever did. I sat there, mesmerized. After looking at my watch, I saw that two hours had passed. Here is a little about the Museum and the Beautiful building it is in, the Conrad Bornman House, with my personal photographs.

THE LABOR AND INDUSTRY MUSEUM
The Labor & Industry Museum is the only public institution devoted to the history of the labor and industry of Belleville and southwestern Illinois. Belleville was one of the most important centers for the growth of the Illinois industry, which ranked third in the nation in the late 19th century. The Museum's mission is to chronicle and interpret the area's rich cultural heritage of labor and industry. Belleville contributed significantly to the industrial movement by establishing some of the earliest and largest manufacturing establishments in the burgeoning United States.

The Labor & Industry Museum is based in the Conrad Bornman House on historic Church Street in Belleville. This 1837 building, rescued from the wrecking ball by the Belleville Historic Preservation Commission, witnessed the enormous development of the 19th-century industry. The building, which has undergone extensive renovation, houses permanent and unique exhibition galleries, an educational center, and archives.

THE CONRAD BORNMAN HOUSE
The building which houses the Labor & Industry Museum has four building dates beginning in 1837. Conrad Bornman, believed to be the first German immigrant to Belleville, purchased the lot at the intersection of North Church and East B Streets in 1837.

The Conrad Bornman House.

The 1881 History of St. Clair County relates that Conrad Bornman, a blacksmith and strawberry farmer who became interested in brick making and the art of bricklaying, and a fellow blacksmith named Small, were the first German immigrants to Belleville. They were the vanguard of the largest German migration to the State of Illinois. Their fellow Germans contributed significantly to the 1830s building boom and the foundry/industrial "Gilded Age" of Belleville and the Belleville area.

By 1837, Conrad Bornman was 20 and had lived in the new world for 19 years. That year, he built a house at 123 North Church Street in Belleville - two blocks from the Public Square, and it is now the home of the Labor and Industry Museum.

When it was boarded up and slated for demolition in 1995, the Historic Preservation Commission noted that it was the last remaining German Street House in the original town of Belleville, as platted in 1814. 

Bornman built his 2½-room house in the classical severity of the "Klassizimus" Style popular in Germany in the 1830s and 1840s. The brick street house is 1-½ stories, with gabled side walls and a cornice of brickwork across the front. The original entry was a single door with sidelights and a transom overhead to catch the summer breezes. The windows are evenly spaced, and the wood lintels are original. The house's interior has log lintels with the bark still on them. There is a trap door to the cellar, worn pine thresholds and the original stairway and floors.

Bornman sold his street house to Charles Born in 1840. Born had emigrated from Germany in 1839 and was a shoemaker by trade -- the 1860 Street Directory lists Born Boot & Shoe Dealer in the first block of North High Street. He also served as a city alderman and city marshal.

Like Bornman, Born changed careers and opened a machine shop with two sons, John Charles and William F. They lived and worked at 123 North Church Street, and the original house was expanded twice before they built a new machine shop at 222 East B Street in 1885. John Charles was the patent holder of six inventions of steam pumps, polishing lathes, and grinders. Charles Born died in 1896, and in 1920 J.C. Born Machine Co. was sold to Columbia Manufacturing Co.

In 1913, the Born family sold the North Church Street building to Charles Beck, who expanded it to house his cigar and tobacco manufactory.

Charles Beck (1867-1933) learned cigar making from Louis Kaemper, a cigar maker at 228 East Main Street. By 1901, Beck had a shop at 208-210 West Main Street. According to his grandson, Beck fashioned all the equipment used in making cigars, chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco, including a stripping machine, humidor and oven. The giant zinc-lined oven remains in the basement of the museum. The last cigar was made in the building in 1957.

Beck was active in the Cigar Maker's Union's affairs and was its vice president. He was instrumental in forming the Belleville Trades and Labor Assembly in 1891 and served as that organization's first treasurer.

Beck's son, Sonny, closed the cigar business in 1957, and the building was sold to Everett E. Sakasko, who operated Ed's TV Repair Service. Sakasko's wife, Geraldine, was the proprietor of the "The Lady Orchid" Beauty Salon.

In 1995, the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council purchased the North Church Street building, and the property was to be demolished to provide parking for the St. Clair County Transit District. However, with the cooperation of the City and County Government and the Historic Preservation Commission, the City of Belleville Planning Department was given six months to find a use for the building.

Since Belleville did not have a visitors center then, the city determined that that would be a good use for the building. Funds were garnered from Downtown Development & Redevelopment, Belleville Tourism, and the Historic Preservation Commission to purchase the building from the Transit District. Additionally, funds would be raised from the public and private sectors to restore the building and house a Labor & Industry Museum. The museum would center on Belleville's Gilded Age, 1865 - 1929.

In 1998, an official board was formed to restore the building and develop the museum. The restored building was dedicated in December 2000. Almost 1,400 people attended the Grand Opening on August 10, 2002.

Ideal Stencil Machine Co., 102 Iowa Avenue, Belleville, Illinois (1911-2002). Two of the world's four stencil machine factories were in Belleville, and the others were in St. Louis. The Ideal Stencil Machine Company, perhaps the best equipped, receives its castings from the Excelsior Foundry located in the same block. Its annual production was about $150,000 (Today, $3,866,975.00), employing 24 people.

VIDEO

Ideal № 1 Stencil Cutting Machine (1911) Tutorial.

Auto Stove Works, New Athens:

Auto Stoves and Ranges for 1935-36; Catalog № 17. (pdf)

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

A downtown Chicago museum no one seems to know about, and, you can just walk-in!

The Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington Street opened in 1897 as Chicago's first central public library. 

The Main Chicago Public Library. Circa 1898

The building is a Chicago Landmark that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. It was converted in 1977 to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg.

The city's central library is now housed across the Loop in the spacious, post-modernist Harold Washington Library Center at 400 South State Street which opened in 1991.

The Harold Washington Library Center.

As the nation's first free municipal cultural center, the Chicago Cultural Center is considered one of the most comprehensive arts showcases in the United States. Each year, the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts. It also serves as headquarters for the Chicago Children's Choir.

The stunning landmark building is home to two magnificent stained-glass domes, as well as free music, dance and theater events, films, lectures, art exhibitions and family events. Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s central public library, the building was designed to impress and to prove that Chicago had grown into a sophisticated metropolis. The country’s top architects and craftsmen used the most sumptuous materials, such as rare imported marbles, polished brass, fine hardwoods, and mosaics of Favrile glass, mother-of-pearl and colored stone, to create an architectural showplace.

Located on the south side of the building, the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome ― 38 feet in diameter with some 30,000 pieces of glass ― was restored to its original splendor in 2008.

On the northside of the building is a 40-foot-diameter dome with some 50,000 pieces of glass in an intricate Renaissance pattern, designed by Healy & Millet.

FURTHER READING: The History of the Main Chicago Public Library.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

---

PHOTO GALLERY

---

On a personal note: 

In the late 1960s I visited the Main Chicago Library to complete a grammar school assignment. For those who remember, there were two hallways running north-south from entrance to entrance. In those hallways were displays of cultural arts; sometimes paintings, sometimes display cabinets lined both hallways with collections of "stuff." I was lucky enough to be there during the exhibit of Cracker Jack (1896) toys thru time. I was a vast collection, over 2,000 toys, and took all the cabinets in both long hallways. 

Pot Metal Toys

Cracker Jack originally included a small "mystery" novelty item referred to as a "Toy Surprise" in each box. The tagline for Cracker Jack was originally "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize." Prizes were included in every box of Cracker Jack beginning in 1912. Early "toy surprises" included rings, plastic figurines, booklets, stickers, temporary tattoos, and decoder rings.

1960s-70s Plastic Toys

The prizes attained pop-culture status with the catch-phrase "came in a Cracker Jack box," particularly when applied sarcastically to engagement and wedding rings of dubious investment value.

The History of the Chicago Historical Society.

Founded in 1856 and incorporated in 1857 by an act of the state legislature, the Chicago Historical Society and its collection grew and opened its first building at the NW corner of Dearborn and Ontario Streets.

Before the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, there were only two libraries in Chicago open to the public. One of these was that of the Young Men’s Association, organized in 1841. The other was the Chicago Historical Society Library, founded in 1856, which may be said to have had a continuous existence for over 160 years, for although the entire collection, amounting to 100,000 volumes, manuscripts, and pamphlets, was destroyed on October 9, 1871, yet before the end of November of that year, active steps had been taken to resume the work.

The First Chicago Historical Society building at the NW Corner of Ontario and Dearborn Streets (1868-1871)

Sister societies in all parts of this country, and even abroad, contributed their publications and duplicates, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston placed a room in its new fire-proof building at the disposal of this Society, to which the various donations were sent until a safe place of deposit could be provided.

Very considerable collections were soon made and forwarded to Chicago, only to be consumed in the Chicago Fire of July 14, 1874. Undismayed by this second calamity, a few enterprising and cultured men, true to the brave and sterling qualities for which Chicago has become famous, stood together and began the work of the Society again at a time when men of less exalted ideals would have felt justified in turning their whole attention to the re-establishment of their own homes.

As the result of such a heroic effort, the Society met for the first time in its temporary building on October 16, 1877, with the nucleus of a third collection and with a prestige heightened by these vicissitudes. It was even possible to reassemble the more significant portion of the rare books and newspapers destroyed, for members of the Society contributed their personal copies of these works, and hundreds of volumes in the Library bear the autographs of pioneer citizens.

The Society has occupied the following locations: 
1856-68, Newberry Building, northeast corner of Wells and Kinzie Streets; 
1868-71, Society’s Building (first), Dearborn and Ontario Streets; 
1872-74, Number 209 Michigan Avenue; 
1877-92, Society’s Building (second), Dearborn and Ontario Streets; 
1892-96, Collections were stored in temporary buildings until the third building was completed;
1896-1931, Society’s Building (third), Dearborn and Ontario Streets.
1932-Present, the Current building at 1601 North Clark Street at the intersection of North Avenue in the Old Town Triangle neighborhood in the Lincoln Park community. 

In 1892, the Henry D. Gilpin fund, having by careful investment more than doubled itself, and the legacy under the will of John Crerar having become available, it was determined to solicit from its members subscriptions for the erection of a permanent fire-proof home for the Society, on the site at the corner of Dearborn Avenue and Ontario Street so long identified with its history. To this appeal, the members responded with their unfailing liberality.

sidebar

The cornerstone of the new Chicago Historical Society structure was laid with appropriate ceremonies on November 12, 1892, 21 years after the Chicago Fire. The organization built a massive stone edifice designed by Henry Ives Cobb, which housed the Gilpin Library and exhibition spaces. On the evening of December 15, 1896, the formal dedication took place.

And... the Excalibur Nightclub building was not used as a morgue for the Chicago Eastland disaster. This is a common misconception, but no evidence supports it.

The temporary buildings being cleared away on the same site, the cornerstone of the new structure was laid with appropriate ceremonies on November 12, 1892. The organization built a massive stone edifice designed by Henry Ives Cobb, which housed the Gilpin Library and exhibition spaces. On the evening of December 15, 1896, the formal dedication took place in the presence of a brilliant and representative gathering.

In the late 1920s, the trustees began planning a new $1 million museum to house its growing collection and to celebrate the city’s centennial. Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the Romanesque Revival building opened in 1932 in Lincoln Park at Clark Street at North Avenue.

That building has been the organization’s home ever since, with various additions, renovations, and improvements. In 1972, the Society unveiled a modern limestone addition by Alfred Shaw and Associates. It was renamed the Chicago History Museum in September 2006.

Are you looking for the history of the Chicago Public Library?

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site in Illinois.

New Salem Illinois State Historic Site is the historically recreated townsite of Abraham Lincoln's 19th-century frontier village in Menard County (previously part of Sangamon County), Illinois.

During Abe Lincoln's 20s, in the 1830s, this was the homestead of the future President. Here, Lincoln earned a living as a boatman (see note below), shopkeeper, a soldier in the Black Hawk War, general store owner, postmaster, land surveyor, rail-splitter, and was first elected to the Illinois General Assembly. 

The Berry-Lincoln Store was probably the first building in the original village and was constructed in 1829. It is remembered as the town's only frame structure, unlike the other log buildings..

Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois, around the time that Springfield became the state capital in 1837.

New Salem was recreated as a historic village in the 1930s, based on the original foundations. The original village was generally abandoned about 1840. The village is located 15 miles northwest of Springfield, and approximately 3 miles south of Petersburg. (The present village of New Salem in Pike County, Illinois is an unrelated community.)

The Original New Salem History.
New Salem was founded in 1828 when James Rutledge and John Camron built a gristmill on the Sangamon River. They surveyed and sold village lots for commercial businesses and homes on the ridge stretching to the west above the mill. Over the first few years of its existence, the town grew rapidly, but after the county seat was located in nearby Petersburg, the village began to shrink and by 1840, it was abandoned. The fact that the Sangamon River was not well-suited for steamboat travel was also a reason for the town's decline.

In 1831, when Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, relocated the family from Indiana to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own. Lincoln arrived in New Salem by way of a flatboat and he remained in the village for about six years.  As far as historians know, Abe Lincoln never owned a home in the village as most single men did not own homes at this time; however, he would often sleep in the tavern (it was common for taverns to rent a bed) or his general store and eat his meals with a local family.

He ran for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832, handily winning his New Salem precinct but losing the countywide district election. He tried again in 1834 and won. Lincoln left New Salem and moved to Springfield, also in his election district, around 1837.

NOTE: Abraham Lincoln, the only U.S. president to hold a patent. He received patent No. 6,469 for his "Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals" on May 22, 1849 while a Congressman in Illinois.

When Lincoln lived in New Salem, the village was home to a cooper shop, blacksmith shop, wool carding mill, four general stores, a grocery, two doctors offices, a shoemaker, a carpenter, a hat maker, a tanner, a schoolhouse/church, several residences, common pastures, and kitchen gardens. During its short existence, the village was home to anywhere from 20-25 families at a time. It is important to remember that New Salem was not a small farm village, but instead a commercial village full of young businessmen and craftsmen trying to start a new life on the frontier.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 
Photographs Copyright © Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.