page_title: Springfield, Illinois
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Springfield, Illinois / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: "Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Republican candidate for the presidency, 1860" - Lithograph by Leopold Grozelier, et al, showing the young Abraham Lincoln, before he grew his iconic beard. According to the Library of Congress, "Thomas Hicks painted a portrait of Lincoln at his office in Springfield specifically for this lithograph." This painting is in the collections of the Chicago Historical Society.
context_page_description: Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat and largest city of Sangamon County. The city's population was 116,250 at the 2010 U.S. Census, which makes it the state's sixth most-populous city, the second largest outside of the Chicago metropolitan area, and the largest in central Illinois. As of 2019, the city's population was estimated to have decreased to 114,230, with just over 211,700 residents living in the Springfield Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Sangamon County and the adjacent Menard County.
  Present-day Springfield was settled by European Americans in the late 1810s, around the time Illinois became a state. The most famous historic resident was Abraham Lincoln, who lived in Springfield from 1837 until 1861, when he went to the White House as President of the United States. Major tourist attractions include multiple sites connected with Lincoln including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices State Historic Site, and the Lincoln Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery.
  The city lies in a valley and plain near the Sangamon River.
context_section_description: Springfield has been home to a wide array of individuals, who, in one way or another, contributed to the broader American culture. Wandering poet Vachel Lindsay, most famous for his  poem "The Congo" and a booklet called "Rhymes to be Traded for Bread", was born in Springfield in 1879.
  At least two notable people affiliated with American business and industry have called the Illinois state capital home at one time or another. Both John L. Lewis, a labor activist, and Marjorie Merriweather Post, the founder of the General Foods Corporation, lived in the city; Post in particular was a native of Springfield. In addition, astronomer Seth Barnes Nicholson was born in Springfield in 1891.
  A Madeiran Portuguese community resided in the vicinity of the Carpenter Street Underpass, one of the earliest and largest Portuguese settlements in the Midwest. The Portuguese immigrants that originated the community left Madeira because they experienced social ostracization due to being Protestants in their largely Catholic homeland, having been converted to Protestantism by a Scottish reverend named Robert Reid Kalley, who visited Madeira in 1838. These Protestant Madeiran exiles relocated to the Caribbean island of Trinidad before settling permanently in Springfield in 1849. By the early twentieth century, these immigrants resided in the western extension of a neighborhood known as the "Badlands." The Badlands was included in the widespread destruction and violence of the Springfield Race Riot in August 1908, an event that led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Carpenter Street archaeological site possesses local and national significance for its potential to contribute to an understanding of the lifestyles of multiple ethnic/racial groups in Springfield during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
caption: Abraham Lincoln resided in Springfield for 24 years
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