Friday, February 6, 2009 9:55 PM CST
Tracing the route of the Lincoln-Hanks-Johnston party
through Coles County and East Central Illinois in March 1830
By Tim Zgonina, Staff Writer
tzgonina@jg-tc.com
Abraham Lincoln’s sojourns through Coles County are well documented — his final visit to see his elderly stepmother in 1861 before departing for Washington, his 1858 trip to Charleston to debate Stephen Douglas, his travels as a lawyer that brought him to the courthouse here several times.
But the occasion of Lincoln’s first setting foot in what was to become Coles County is far less evidential — an educated guess based on recollection, conjecture and deduction.
The 21-year-old Lincoln came to Illinois for the first time with his family in the late winter of 1830, migrating from his father’s homestead in Spencer County, Ind., to Macon County, Ill. A relative, John Hanks, was living in Macon County, and it was his glowing reports of the place — along with the prevalence of “milk sick” (a condition caused by cows ingesting a poisonous plant) in Spencer County — that induced the elder Lincoln to make the move.
There were at least 12 people in the party besides Lincoln: his father, Thomas, stepmother, Sarah, and stepbrother, John D. Johnston; Squire Hall, his wife, Matilda, and their son, John; and Dennis Hanks, his wife, Elizabeth, and their four children, Harriet, John, Sarah Jane and Nancy.
The little group, all of whom were related by blood or marriage, transported their worldly possessions in a couple of wooden wagons — one of which was driven by Abraham — drawn by oxen and horses. The 220-mile trip, which today could be completed by car in a single morning, took the Lincoln party two onerous weeks.
Except for a few points along the route, The Lincoln Way, as it has come to be called, cannot be retraced with certainty. East-central Illinois at that time was sparsely inhabited and traversable only by way of a few traces and fords. Pioneers crossing it made their way where they could, avoiding swamps, following trails and striking out overland when they had to. There were no permanent roads nor records.
The fact that any information about The Lincoln Way has come down to us at all is due to two sources: Lincoln himself, and an exhaustive 1915 study by the Illinois State Historical Library commissioned by the Legislature to settle the route once and for all.
The Lincoln Party left Gentryville, Ind., March 1, 1830, and crossed the Wabash River by ferry at Vincennes, Ind., into Lawrence County, Ill., a few days later. Lincoln said so himself, during his visit to Charleston in 1861, when he reminisced about the trip with his kinsman, Augustus Chapman, who was the husband of Lincoln’s cousin and fellow traveler, Harriet Hanks. Chapman later related the remembrances to Lincoln biographer Jesse Weik.
Landing on the Illinois bank of the Wabash, the party took the post office road to Lawrenceville, crossing and recrossing the Embarras River in order to avoid an area of wet sloughs called the Purgatories. From Lawrenceville, the party headed northeast, though Christian Settlement and Russellville, where they picked up an established trail northward along the west side of the Wabash. On this they made their way past Palestine, Hutsonville, York and on to Darwin.
From this point, the route becomes less certain, though there is no doubt that it passed through present-day Coles County, with the future president first setting foot on its soil probably on March 10, according to Lincoln scholar and Eastern Illinois University history professor Charles Coleman, whose 1955 book “Abraham Lincoln and Coles County, Illinois” is the ultimate authority on the subject. (In early 1830, what is now Coles County was still part of Clark and Edgar counties).
Lincoln, three decades after the fact, recalled that the party then headed west toward the Richwoods settlement in Clark County, a few miles east of present-day Westfield, then to a place called Dead Man’s Grove, about six miles west of Charleston. (This would be near present-day Dead Man’s Curve on Illinois Route 316, but the original site was named for a man found frozen to death among the trees in the 1820s.)
According to Lincoln’s memory, the band of travelers continued northwest, crossing the Kaskaskia River at Willow Ford near the Nelson settlement, which was located between present-day Sullivan and Allenville, arriving in Decatur and the farm site on the Sangamon River about March 15.
In present-day Coles County itself, the party could have traveled by two or three different routes, and which one they took is subject to debate.
There were two places where the party could have crossed the Embarras River — Logan’s Ford, later called McCann’s Ford, which is located about a mile north of the Coles-Cumberland county line, south of present-day Fox Ridge State Park and east of Goosenest Prairie, where Thomas Lincoln would eventually settle; and Parker’s Ford, later called Blakeman’s Ford, near present-day Blakeman’s Bridge off Illinois Route 130 south of Charleston.
The route that Lincoln remembered, efficient and direct, would have taken the party from Richwoods, along the easily traversed high ground that lay between there and the river, to Parker’s Ford, then past the nascent Charleston settlement, where they could have reprovisioned, then at least along a portion of the Paris-Shelbyville trail, (later the Old State Road) and beyond.
That route, however, ignores the Wabash Point, or Paradise settlement, located south of Mattoon, where relatives of Sarah Bush Lincoln were then living.
The State Historical Library study concluded, based on memories and assertions of other members of the party and their descendants, that the group took a more southerly route across the county that involved fording the Embarras at Logan’s Ford and taking the trail across Goosenest Prairie to Paradise. Historical records show that there was at least a rudimentary trail leading from Darwin to Logan’s Ford and west to Paradise, and such a route would have made for easier travel.
Moreover, Sarah Bush Lincoln’s sister, Hannah, was the wife of Ichabod Radley, and they lived in a cabin near Paradise. Also living in the neighborhood, near present-day Magnet, was John Sawyer and his wife, who was the Radleys’ daughter and therefore Mrs. Lincoln’s niece.
The proximity of relatives and their warm cabins, and the direct route to them through Logan’s Ford, would have been a powerful draw for the little band of travelers, and the study concludes that they likely took this route and spent the night of March 11 in the Paradise area.
Coleman, too, believed that the party visited their Paradise kin, but he held that the group crossed the Embarras at Parker’s Ford, then took the Paris-Shelbyville trail directly there.
No one can say for sure by which route they transited Coles County, only that they did.
Perhaps the biggest conundrum about the passage is Dead Man’s Grove. Lincoln mentions it specifically. Yet, if the party spent a night near Paradise, which seems logical, touching Dead Man’s Grove would have involved a detour of several miles off the direct line between Paradise and Nelson. It seems unlikely that they would have passed both places; the 1915 study concludes that they did, while Coleman rejects the Dead Man’s Grove possibility altogether as a misstatement on Lincoln’s part.
Another matter of contention: If the party passed the settlement that would later be called Charleston, why did he not say so to Chapman, himself a resident of the city, since he did bother to mention insignificant places such as Richwoods and Nelson?
History is filled with contradictions, and the 1915 study entertains notions from several affiants that The Lincoln Way actually went through western Indiana, Mount Carmel, Marshall, Greenup, Vandalia and other places in between.
To paraphrase Coleman, if the party had indeed passed through every community that claimed they did, they might still be on the road today.
Contact Tim Zgonina at tzgonina@jg-tc.com.
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