Springfield IL
...day. I personally would have liked to work in the New Capitol building. It just seemed more up to date, naturally. It also seemed like a more comfortable environment to work in, seeing as the old capitol had no air conditioning or heating. After President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his body was brought back to Springfield for a wake in the old capitol. It took 20 days for his body to be moved from Washington to Springfield by train. An average of 75,000 people passed through the senate chamber to pay their last respects to our sixteenth president. Before Lincoln lived in Springfield, he lived in New Salem, IL. When we visited New Salem, there were interpreters acting like they were from the time period in which Lincoln lived there. We talked to some of the interpreters, and this is what they taught us about their characters. Samuel Hill was born in New Jersey, and came to New Salem in 1829. He built a carding mill, and was the richest man in town. That July, Hill married Parthena Nance, and by 1840 Hill had moved his family and store to nearby Petersburg. Dr. Allen was the town doctor. Unlike most doctors of that time, he had gone to medical school. His medical office was facilitated in his home, and he tried to help people get better, whether they had a serious wound, an illness, or even a bad tooth that needed to be pulled. He was very wealthy, was also part of a temperance movement (a movement made so people wouldn’t drink alcohol). He lived in New Salem for ten years and lost his wife and child. He then moved to Petersburg, married, and had six children. After this, we talked to Ms. Marian Rutledge about the Rutledge Inn, the New Salem Tavern. James Rutledge co founded the tavern after New Salem had begun to prosper. Room and board for one night was thirty-seven and a half cents, which also included home cooked meal baked in the fireplace. The Rutledge family left New Salem in 1833. The next place we went to was the Berry-Lincoln Store. This was where Abraham Lincoln had worked before he moved to Springfield. When Lincoln lived here, he was twenty-two years old, and still single. He resided in New Salem for six years. The store was general store and they revolved around trading items. They also worked on credit, which had to be paid back. The store wasn’t very successful. In the town of New Salem, there was a school that virtually all children attended. The school was built in 1830 and was only one room, and reading, writing, and arithmetic were taught there. The cost of school was determined by the age of the child. Tuition usually ranged from 30 cents to 85 cents a month, and an average of 20 to 25 children attended. Mentor Graham, who had come from Kentucky, taught at the school. He taught at the school all ten years he lived there, and was in his mid-forties when he came to New Salem. Although he taught for 50 years total, he didn’t have any specific education. He had no children of his own, and was friends with almost everyone in the town. While we were passing houses, we saw several women sitting on the porch of the general store playing music. We walked up to the ladies, and they said they were playing “Marching Though Georgia.” The instruments were the cello, the hammer dulcimer, the lap dulcimer, and recorders. One point of our fieldtrip in which we all had a good laugh was when we met “Sliky” Bill Green. He said he had nine children and that his wife had died and he was “courting” a girl named Isabella. He also made fun of the way Allie was talking. He said that she didn’t know her alphabet when she said ‘ok,’ and that we were to say ‘op,’ so we wouldn’t confuse the ‘youngins.’ New Salem was a very interesting little town, which only survived a short number of years. After six years Lincoln left New Salem. He married his wife, Mary, and moved to Springfield. The house Lincoln bought in Springfield was originally much smaller and belonged to Rev. Charles Dresser. In 1856, Lincoln added a second story to the home to accommodate for his growing family. The interior of Lincoln’s house was very cluttered and very mismatched. The wallpaper in each room did not compliment the color of the carpet. Some of the things were just shoved together. Although it all seemed original, only fifty out of the one thousand and two hundred items actually belonged to Lincoln and his family. One item that was actually his was in his bedroom: a small shaving mirror. Another personal item was the stove in the kitchen. I also realized that there were different formalities observed in each room. For example, the parlor was very proper and children were not allowed to enter. The furniture was much fancier then that of the sitting room, a room where our tour guide said that you could usually find Lincoln’s young sons playing a game such as dominos on the floor. When we went up to the second floor, I learned that in the 1800’s, a well-off husband and a wife didn’t usually share the same room. Lincoln’s legal career also started in Illinois. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1837. He won a number of cases but did not become wealthy practicing law. His fees were modest, but it allowed him to become one of the best courtroom lawyers in the state. He also formally accepted his nomination for President in the parlor of his home. The neighborhood in which the Lincoln house is located was an ideal neighborhood for Lincoln to reside. It was a quiet neighborhood where he could practice law and raise his family. The neighbors were also very friendly, and the Lincolns kept in touch with them even after they moved to into the White House. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the people immediately tried to get approval to bury his body at Springfield. This was accomplished, and a memorial was built over where Lincoln lay to pay tribute to the great deeds the sixteenth president had accomplished for our country. When we entered the tomb, silence was required to honor and respect the family. Although all members of the Lincoln family were invited to be buried in the tomb, Lincoln’s oldest son Robert was buried with his wife in Arlington National Cemetery. When we came out of the tomb, we were permitted to touc...