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Lincoln's New Salem, Reconstructed

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Lincoln's New Salem, Reconstructed Lincoln’s New Salem, Reconstructed MARK B. POHLAD “Not a building, scarcely a stone” In his classic Lincoln’s New Salem (1934), Benjamin P. Thomas observed bluntly, “By 1840 New Salem had ceased to exist.”1 A century later, however, a restored New Salem was—after the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C.—the most visited Lincoln site in the world. How this transformation occurred is a fascinating story, one that should be retold, especially now, when action must be taken to rescue the present New Salem from a grave decline. Even apart from its connection to Abraham Lincoln, New Salem is like no other reconstructed pioneer village that exists today. Years before the present restoration occurred, planners aimed for a unique destination. A 1920s state-of- Illinois brochure claimed that once the twenty- five original structures were rebuilt on their original founda- tions, it would be “the only known city in the world that has ever been restored in its entirety.”2 In truth, it is today the world’s largest log- house village reconstructed on its original site and on its build- ings’ original foundations. It is still startling nearly two hundred years later that a town of more than a hundred souls—about the same number as lived in Chicago at that time—existed for only a decade. But such was the velocity of development in the American West. “Petersburg . took the wind out of its sails,” a newspaperman quipped in 1884, because a new county seat and post office had been established there; Lincoln himself had surveyed it.3 Now the very buildings of his New Salem friends and 1. Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln’s New Salem (Chicago: Abraham Lincoln Bookshop, 1966), 57. I wish to thank Dr. James Cornelius for the information and advice he pro- vided for this project. 2. “Old Salem State Park,” Illinois Public Department of Works and Buildings, ca. 1925, p. 3, https://archive.org/details/illinoisnewsalemlinc_4/page/n6. 3. Joseph M. Di Cola, New Salem: A History of Lincoln’s Alma Mater (Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2017), 82. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2019 © 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Mark B. Pohlad 39 neighbors were disassembled and moved to the new town a few miles north. Not all were moved away from New Salem, however. One had actually been brought there in Lincoln’s time: the Hill- McNamar store, which Hill had purchased at Clary’s Grove. A few years later, as New Salem was being abandoned, Hill moved it to Petersburg.4 Describing New Salem in the 1880s, William H. Herndon and Jesse Weik, in their Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (1889), lamented, “Not a building, scarcely a stone, is left to mark the place where it once stood. A few crumbling stones here and there are all that attest [to] its former existence. [W]hat became of the abodes they left behind, shall be questions for the local historian.”5 Indeed, at the time of Lincoln’s assassination, there was “only one lone and solitary log hut” standing in the original village site.6 Roads were grassing over, trees were sprouting from ancient cellars, and the place had reverted to pasture. Soon, it was being referred to, even by those who had once lived there, as “Old Salem.” One of the most haunting aspects of New Salem’s disappearance is how its old foundations and cellars were used as quarries for new buildings.7 Petersburg residents, perhaps even those who had moved from New Salem, might themselves have taken stones. One reason New Salem descendant Ida L. Bale could contest the location of the re- created Rutledge Tavern (see below) in 1931 is that she remembered her uncle pillaging the original foundation.8 Pilgrimages and Renewed Interest Although Lincoln downplayed the importance of his early life, includ- ing his time in New Salem, devotees ardently sought out information about it after his death. Herndon, Lincoln’s former law partner, and the one who did more than anyone to generate interest in Lincoln’s early life, visited the site, as did Ida M. Tarbell. Their biographies innovatively highlighted his years as a young man, advancing the notion that it was essential to understanding Lincoln the president. 4. Ibid., 96. 5. William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1893), 1: 68, 69. 6. Thomas, Lincoln’s New Salem, 141; though his source does not identify the structure, it was most likely the Jacob Bale House. 7. Barbara Burlison Mooney, “Lincoln’s New Salem; Or, the Trigonometric Theorem of Vernacular Restoration,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 1, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 20. 8. Ibid., 28. 40 Lincoln’s New Salem, Reconstructed Historians, locals, Chautauqua attendees, and Lincoln lovers of all stripes made “pilgrimages” to this “Mecca of the soul.”9 Private vis- its eventually fostered group visits. Throughout the 1870s and ‘80s, late- summer reunions of Menard County settlers occurred there, and demonstrations of old rural activities were enacted. As we shall see, the entire period of New Salem’s restoration (1890–1940) was near enough to Lincoln’s time to attract people who had actually known him or who were relatives of those who had. The dedication of the Rut- ledge Tavern in the 1930s included a reunion of the Rutledge family.10 In the years following Lincoln’s assassination, people were rightly concerned that there was nothing left of the town to represent the person fast becoming the most famous American of all. In 1870 the Menard County Old Settlers Association was founded, the first such organization dedicated to preserving Lincoln’s New Salem. But where some saw the need to memorialize, others saw commercial opportu- nity. In 1885 some Menard County residents hoped to build a veterans’ home on the site, and there was even talk of developers purchasing the site for use as an amusement park or a beer garden.11 In the 1870s, visitors to the village site were eager to see anything connected to Lincoln—even supernaturally so. Some marveled at young entwined trees growing from the cellar of the vanished Offutt store, where Lincoln held his first job. A local artist, purportedly the Petersburg painter Aaron Francis Phillips (1848–99), carved a rude portrait of Lincoln on one of them. He painted it to make it even more lifelike and touched it up each spring.12 It seemed to many that the young trees were a metaphor for Lincoln’s own growth as a national icon. Others saw in the conjoined trees Lincoln’s reunion of North and South; the carved portrait face “turned toward the sweet, sunny South.”13 Ida L. Bale admitted to carving the name “Lincoln” into the trunk of one tree as a young girl; it was a way of marking it for tourists. She then watched the name slowly rise up the tree as it grew. Soon the 9. Thompson Gaines Onstot, Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties (Peoria, IL: T. G. Onstot, 1902), 79. 10. Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1937. 11. Richard S. Taylor and Mark L. Johnson, “The Spirit of the Place: Origins of the Movement to Reconstruct Lincoln’s New Salem,” Journal of Illinois History 7 (2004): 184, 188. 12. Ida L. Bale, New Salem as I Knew It (Petersburg, IL: Petersburg Observer Company, 1939), 14. 13. From a poem by Carrie Wright, “Our Own Little Village and the Home of Abra- ham Lincoln,” in C. S. McCullough, Petersburg and the Early Home of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: R. Acton [1896?]), unpag. Mark B. Pohlad 41 trees were covered with names, as souvenir hunters broke off limbs and chipped pieces from the trunks. Boys shot at the Lincoln portrait until it was obliterated.14 At this point, the site offered little hope of being restored. Through- out the 1880s visitors saw only a weeded pasture with depressions marking ancient cellars.15 Sometime during that decade the whole site was plowed because it had become so overgrown. This further destroyed paths, roads, and traces of the original buildings.16 The Chautauqua, Hearst, and the State It is impossible to speak about the reconstructions of New Salem with- out acknowledging the early efforts of the Old Salem Chautauqua. It began in 1898 when the Old Salem Cumberland Presbyterian State Chautauqua Association held a two-week assembly near New Salem. Subsequent gatherings became so popular that in 1909 the association bought fifty-four acres on the Sangamon River a half-mile north of the village, where period artifacts were displayed and streets were named for former New Salem residents. Chautauquas were a combination of county fair, revival meeting, and outdoor university. Wildly popular in late nineteenth- century America, they spawned their own celebrity speakers and tourism culture. The Old Salem Chautauqua was linked to Abraham Lincoln from the very beginning, and this aspect was part of its regional appeal. Chautauquans could take a steamboat to “Salem Hill,” stroll, picnic, and view old building foundations marked by posted signs.17 After 1919, Chautauqua visitors marveled at the five buildings erected by the Old Salem Lincoln League, and after 1934, the complete reconstructed pioneer village was on display. Altogether, the Chautauqua was of incalculable importance in maintaining interest in the restoration of Lincoln’s New Salem. Congressman Henry T. Rainey intervened when word got out about potential buyers of the site. He contacted one of his younger fellow congressmen: the media mogul William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951).
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