History of Mt. Zion
Abe Lincoln in Macon County
By Jerry L. Potts 2001
In 1830 at the age of 21, young Abe with his family traveled from Indiana to a site his father Tom has selected on the Sangamon River just west of Decatur. They undoubtedly would have passed through Mt. Zion, at the time called Wilson Post Office, since this was the only road from the east in this part of the country. The Wilson Post Office then located on Main Street near the present day Heritage Park, would have been an inviting place for the Lincoln Family to rest their oxen and horses.
Thomas Lincoln sold the eighty acres he had entered and partly paid for, and a lot in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, belonging to his wife, going there with her to complete the deal. He bought, some say made, a wagon, an "iron bound wagon" said to be "the first and only one he ever owned," the wheels of which were merely disks of wood with iron bands. Mention is made of a wagon he bought at a sale in Kentucky for eight and a third cents, but at that price it may be It was mere flattery to call it a wagon. Dr. Barton suggests it was a toy wagon. He loaded his wagon with three beds and bedding, one bureau, one table, one set of chairs, one chest, and cooking utensils. He took one cow, an extra horse, and a little dog under the wagon.
The whole tribe is commonly represented as coming in one wagon, but Abraham Lincoln said that "the mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by oxen, and he drove one of the teams, Mrs. Harriet Hanks Chapman said that "they had three wagons, two drawn by two yoke of oxen each, and one by two teams of horses." She would be in position to know, either from her own memory from her father or mother, or, as she lived with him awhile from Lincoln himself.
The company consisted of Thomas Lincoln, his wife, Sarah B. Lincoln, her son, John D. Johnston ; Dennis Hanks, his wife, Sarah E. Hanks, their daughters, Sarah Jane, Nancy M., and Harriet ( the one that told of the wagons) , and a son named John ; Squire Hall, his wife, Matilda (a daughter of Sarah B. Lincoln), and their son, also named John; and last but not least Abraham Lincoln making thirteen in all, a perfect number, like the thirteen tribes of Israel, or the thirteen original colonies, or the Thirteen tribes, thirteen months of the new calendar. Thirteen was considered a sacred and lucky number by the Aztecs, the Mayan and Incan races. Lincoln at this time (the last of February or the first of March, 1830) , was not quite a month past twenty-one. He was nearly six feet, four inches tall, with coarse, straight black hair, gray eyes, and a pleasant homely face; but then, as ever, he had a certain charm that grew on one! He was clothed in coonskin cap, jeans coat, and buckskin breeches.
He says of himself that he did not know much, but could read, write, spell, and cipher to the rule of three. But then he always was modest, and most people at middle age would say with him, that at twenty-one they did not know much. But, though his formal schooling had been scanty, he had read the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington by Weems, Life of Marion, also The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay, Statutes of Indiana, Life of Franklin, an etymological dictionary, the Kentucky Preceptor, Robinson Crusoe, Webster's blue-backed speller, Murray's reader,. Aesop's Fables, a history of the United States of America, and the Arabian Nights!' Quite a respectable list for that time and place. Crossing rivers and creeks was difficult so they avoided them when they could, and forded when there was no other way. In the early part of the day the water was slightly frozen, and the oxen would break through a square yard at every step. The little dog got left behind at one stream; it whined, ran up and down the bank, but re- fused to jump in and swim across. Lincoln took compassion on it, waded through the ice floe and carried it over in his arms. The ground had not thawed through yet, but during the day the road would thaw out on the surface, and at night freeze over again, thus making traveling, especially for oxen, painfully slow and tiresome! When they reached Palestine, a juggler was performing his tricks to amuse the crowd that had gathered at the land office. From here they went northwest, nearly losing a wagon in fording the Okaw.
The caravan must have entered Macon County as it now is, on the old Springfield and Paris trace, as it had been laid out some years before by the Legislature. It is sometimes called the "old road"-old In 1830 the commissioner's book of Macon County . According to the late Rev. Martin Baker, as late as 1850 the main road running from Paris to Springfield was nothing more than two parallel tracks, where the horses walked and the wagon wheels ran, with a strip of grass and weeds in the middle high enough to touch the axle trees. This was not the old road, but the Terre Haute stage road, a cut- off running through Decatur and connecting with the old road. It was relocated in 1833 by Colonel James Johnson and Philip D. Williams. It crossed the river at the Cowford, east of the present bathing-beach and a little south. Later it crossed at a bridge in Decatur Township just west of Camp Kiwanis. It was called the Decatur and Paris State Road, and on some old plats the Lovington Road. The Old Springfield road passed Mt. Zion, Mt. Gilead, Salem, and Bethlehem churches, and on past the Huddleson House and the deserted town of Madison on the south side of the river to the county line. The Lincolin cabin stood a mile north of the road.
from THE LINCOLNS THE HANKS AND MACON COUNTY by EDWIN DAVIS
That spring and summer Abe helped his family build a log cabin on the north bank of the river, they plowed 20 acres of prairie and Abe split many a rail for his neighbors. It was also during that summer that Abe would make his first political speech in Decatur. His topic was the merits of making the Sangamon a navigable river.
That year they suffered one of those winters that occasionally plague us from time to time. Two feet of snow fell with much drifting, freezing rain and another foot of snow made traveling nearly impossible. The wolves took many cattle and deer that fell through the snow and could not move. Several weeks of extreme temperatures, and with the deep snow, the family was forced to survive on what little corn they had stored. Abe, on an attempt to reach a neighbors house, fell though some thin ice on the river getting is feet wet. He reached his neighbor's cabin, but not without some frostbite.
With the coming of spring, Abe's father had decided to move the family south to Coles County. Abe, however had other plans and said his goodbyes to his family. Abe too left Macon County traveling down the Sangamon River, eventually ending up in New Salem. He would return as a young lawyer to Macon County some years later.
