Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1921-04-22

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He arrived at New Salem in 1881 "a stranger,
friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working
a flatboat for $40 month, as he himself put it.
In 1887 he left New Salem to take up his law prac-
tce in Springfield.
In those momentous six years he had trans
formed himself from ignorant and uncouth
youth of twenty-five to a man of acknowledged
promise and ability with more than local popu-
larity and an ambition that spurred him to travel
far
Those six years were crowded years. 1t was 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 fortieh year. after his
election to congress in 1S49
1t was at New Salem that he was clerk and
Storekeeper; that he studied grammar and Black
stone that he was captain in the Black Hawk
war, that he was deputy surveyor that he was
postmaster, that he was defeated and tfen elected
for the legislature. And it was at New Salem that
he loved and wooed and lost Ann Rutiedge over
whose death he nearly lost his reason from grief
New Salem was founded in 1923. Soon after
Lincoln went to Springfield the little town began
to decline Its people left for more accessible
places. By 1916 New Salem bad been abandoned.
Today, under the auspices Of the Old Salem Lin
coin League an organization formed in 1917
sHonest Abe's' town is being restored in fac
smile It will be in every possible detail like the
New Salem which he knew. Old maps, old prints
consulted to make the new village an exact repro
duction of the DID, 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, it is expected.
Old Salem State Park
Old Salem State park will be New Salem's new
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 young man. The numbered
plan is from the architects working model.
New Salem first called Camerons Mill was on
the Sangamon river (then spelled Sangamo and
pronounced Sangamaw) 20 miles northwest Of
Sangamon county, with Springfield as the county
seat. Springfield itself was 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 '9ong 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 Rutedge, who en-
tered their claims July 20, 1928 Here they
erected their grist and saw Mills both housed
in one structure built out into the Sangamo river,
that fringed the town site. New Salem grew up
around this mill.
Sediments existed already at Carys Grove, at
q place now called Athens, at Sugar Grove and at
Indian Point all within ten or twelve miles of
New Salem. With a mill to attract these settlers.
the opportunity for business at the new settlement