More to this life: Visiting Mr. Lincoln

June 20-23

We rolled into the Springfield area and set up camp at Lincoln's New Salem, a reconstructed village to match the time when Abraham Lincoln spent his early adulthood here. There's a lot to tell where he obtained some of his thoughts on life and who he came to be. Lincoln was here in the 1830s and left in 1837. Curiously, the village was pretty much abandoned by 1840.

Twelve log houses, the Rutledge Tavern, ten workshops, stores, mills and a school where church services were held have been reproduced and furnished as they might have been in the 1830s. The furnishings, including many articles actually used by the New Salem people of Lincoln's time and others dating back to the same time period, were assembled and donated to the state by the Old Salem Lincoln League. The collection includes such early-nineteenth-century articles as wheat cradles, candle molds, cord beds, flax hackles, wood cards, dough and cornmeal chests and early American pewter.

One note - the girls took a lot of these pictures. Budding photographers!

Lincoln's New Salem

One of the period characters demonstrating how they dyed the yarn to get the different colors. They used everything from some tree barks to bugs. Do you know which ones?

The one room schoolhouse and church building. Emi is ever the teacher!

Lincoln's 1st store....He and a partner had two stores here and both failed, or "winked out" as the story goes.

Saturday -The Lincoln Museum and Library

Some history...

Planing for the museum started in 1990...The Museum was dedicated on April 19, 2005, in a ceremony attended by President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, future President and then U.S. Senator Barack Obama, and about 25,000 guests from around the world who crowded Springfield’s downtown for the occasion.

The public responded enthusiastically to the Museum, quickly making it the most visited presidential library and museum in the United States. Attendance reached one million visitors on January 6, 2007, and two million on July 4, 2009. No presidential library and museum in the United States had reached the two million visitor mark more quickly. The three-millionth visitor passed through the Museum’s doors on August 21, 2012.

The Library wasn't open because it was Saturday, but we were able to spend about three hours in the museum.

We tend to think of news coverage of politicians in our current day environment. One of the things that surprised me was the amount of vitriol directed at Lincoln in the press and commentaries during the days of the Civil War and even before when he was talking about freeing the slaves through what we now know as the Emancipation Proclamation. It definitely wasn't nice - they just didn't have any electronic means to spread it as quickly as today!

Did you notice the poses?

John Wilkes Booth

They loved the gowns and dress of the era, so they loved "Mary's attic" a place to play dress up. And it was one of the few places they allowed photography.

The Lincoln Tomb

This is a replica of the statue of Lincoln by Daniel Chester French in His memorial in DC

The rotunda and corridors contain reduced-scale reproductions of important Lincoln statues as well as plaques with excerpts from Lincoln’s Springfield farewell speech, the Gettysburg Address, and his Second Inaugural Address. Lincoln’s remains rest in a concrete vault ten feet below the marble floor of the burial chamber. A massive granite cenotaph marking the gravesite is flanked by the Presidential flag and flags of the states in which the Lincoln family resided. Crypts in the chamber’s south wall hold the remains of Lincoln’s wife and three of their sons.