Champaign County's Lincoln

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Champaign County was always on Lincoln’s circuit. Abraham Lincoln spent nearly 20 years of his life practicing law on the 8th Judicial Circuit, traveling from one county seat to another. Even as the circuit shrank while population ...

Lincoln at Work and Play

You Can't Fool the People

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DeWitt County was part of the Eighth Judicial Circuit from its beginning, and so was Abraham Lincoln, who attended the first session of DeWitt Circuit Court in Clinton on October 24, 1839. Court sessions were ...

Lincoln's Hat

A proper Presbyterian Church was under construction in the summer of 1859. A floor was laid, walls, roof, and belfry nearly completed, when “a halt due to lack of funds” occurred. In October 1859, money was urgently needed to complete ...

Lincoln and The Law

During his twenty years on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, Abraham Lincoln tried numerous cases in the DeWitt County courthouses, including a slander case involving William Dungey. Dungey, “a dark skinned man of Portuguese descent,” married Joseph Spencer’s sister. The brothers-in-law ...

Lincoln's Friends and Foes

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This satirical February 1863 editorial illustration, titled “The Copperhead Party, “ depicts three Copperheads advancing on Columbia. Copperheads were Southern sympathizers who saw themselves as “Peace Democrats,” opposed to Lincoln and the forced preservation of the Union. ...

The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway, America's first trans-continental route, was officially opened in June, 1915, amid widespread local celebrations.

The highway (U.S. Route 30) originally entered the city's East End, but later alterations caused it to cross into East Liverpool via the ...

Lincoln Highway

The country's first coast-to-coast highway was established in 1913 by the Lincoln Highway Association, largely by improving and linking existing roads between New York and San Francisco. The highway changed the way people traveled and the landscape of nearby towns. ...

Beginning of the Lincoln Circuit Trail

A National Historic trail of the Boy Scouts of America established in 1963 as part of the circuit traveled between Urbana and Danville, Il. By Abraham Lincoln on the Eighth Judicial District in 1847 - 1859.

The trail traverses 16 miles ...

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln made his only speech in Warren

County, Indiana near this

spot Feb. 11, 1861.“Gentlemen of Indiana: I am happy to meet you on this occasion, and enter again the state of my early life, and almost of maturity. I am ...

Abraham Lincoln

At noon on February 11, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural train stopped at the Great Western Depot located here. It was the day before his 52nd birthday. He had been coming to Vermilion County for twenty years to attend Circuit ...