President Abraham Lincoln’s nine-car funeral train departed Washington, D.C. on April 21, 1865, and arrived in Urbana on April 29 at 10:40 p.m. Urbana’s citizens erected an arch of evergreens and flowers near the station west of Main Street, and a large crowd of mourners received the train, but the arch was hastily removed because it was too narrow to allow the train’s passage. Other memorial gestures included a large cross entwined with evergreen wreathes, mounted on the station platform under the direction of the President of Ladies Soldiers Aid Society, Mrs. Milo G. Williams. Forty citizens of different churches sang “Go to Thy Rest,” and ten young ladies entered the funeral car and strewed flowers on Lincoln’s coffin. The train then departed west across the Mad River Valley, through Rice and Westville, and up the Blue Hill to St. Paris; on May 3 it reached Springfield, Illinois, and the President’s funeral was held on May 4.
