Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1921-04-28


He arrived at New Salem in 1881 "a stranger,
friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on
a fatboat for $40 month";" he himself put it.
In 1887 he left New Salem to take up his law prac-
tice in Springfield
In those momentous six years he had trans
formed himself from ignorant and uncouth
youth of twenty-five to Of acknowledged
promise and ability, with more than local popu-
larity and an ambition that spurred him to travel
far
Those six gears were crowded years. 1t at
New Salem that Lincoln earned his nickname of
-'Honest Abe'-and incidentally fastened upon
himself a burden of debt which he was never able
fully to wipe out until his fortieth year. after his
election to congress in 1S49.
1t at New Salem that he was clerk and
storekeeper; that he studied grammar and Black
stone; that he was a captain in the Black Hawk
war, that he was deputy surveyor, that he was
postmaster, that he was defeated and then elected
for the legislature. And It was at New Salem that
he loved and wooed and lost Ann Rutledge over
whose death he nearly lost his reason from grief.
New Salem founded in 1925 Soon after
Lincoln went to Springfield the little town began
to decline. Its people left for more accessible
places. BY 1845 New Salem had been abandoned.
Today, under the auspices of the Old Salem Lin
coin League, an organization formed in 1917,
"Honest Abe's' town is being restored in fac
sime. 1t will be in every possible detail like the
New Salem which he knew. Old maps old prints
old deeds-every record obtainable-have been
consulted to make the new village an exact repro
duction of the old. The only new building is the
Lincoln museum. William Randolph Hearst gave
the property. The cost of rebuilding is being met
by popular subscription The work will be done
some time this summer, 1t is expected.
Old Salem State Park.
Old Salem State park will be New Salems new
name Its purpose is to preserve for posterity the
environment and atmosphere that helped make
Lincoln the man.
AS to the photographs here reproduced: The
portrait of Honest Abe" is one of the earliest
photographs he had taken and gives the best idea
of his appearance as a young man. The numbered
plan is from the architects working model.
New Salem, first called Cameron's MILL was on
the Sangamon river (then spelled Sangamo and
pronounced. Sangamaw) 20 miles northwest Of
Springfield. In those days New Salem was in
SangamUn county, with Springfield as the county
seat. Springfield Itself still mere village,
having a population of 1000, or perhaps LOO.
The capital of the state yet at Vandalia and
waiting for the parliamentary tact of Abraham
Lincoln and the "lOng nine' to take it to Spring
field
The historian of the restoration project says
that the first settlers Of New Salem were John M.
Cameron and his uncle James Rutledge who en-
tered their claims on July 20, 1928. Here they
erected their grist and saw mills, both housed
in structure built out into the Sangamon river,
that fringed the town site. New Salem grew up
around this mill.
Sediments existed already at Clary's Grove at
place now called Athens, at Sugar Grove and at
Indian Point all within ten twelve miles of
New Salem. With mill to attract these settlers,
the opportunity for business at the new settlement